children of the ashes

CHILDREN
OF THE ASHES
THE PEOPLE OF HIROSHIMA
AFTER THE BOMB
By Robert Jungk
On 6 August 1945 the life of the Japanese city of Hiroshima was utterly shattered by the
detonation of one nuclear weapon - an atom bomb dropped by an American plane over the city centre.
Today Hiroshima is busier, larger and richer than before the bomb dropped. But there still remain the
physical and emotional scars of that terrible day forty year’s ago. And the rebirth of Hiroshima was
neither easy nor painless. The survivors of the bomb - many of them injured and affected by lingering
radiation sickness -met with a horrifying indifference from other Japanese and from the American
occupiers. Indeed, as the years went by, many of those disfigured by the bomb were made to feel
ashamed of their injuries.
Children of the Ashes is Robert Jungk’s classic account of the rebuilding of Hiroshima. The slow,
grudging recognition of the problems facing the survivors is illuminated by the stories of three people
- Kazuo M., a young boy who was given to commit a senseless murder, Ichiro Kawamoto, who was
one of the few to continue to care for those suffering from radiation sickness, and the frail, crippled
Tokic Uematsu, who was scared to marry the man she loved in case their children would be affected
by the radiation from the bomb.
In 1980 Robert Jungk revisited Hiroshima, and that journey gave rise to new observations on the
state of the city a generation after the bomb. In an age when one H-bomb has a power 1,000 times that
used in Hiroshima, this book is also a horrifying warning.
‘Terrible . . . compassionate . . . superb historical journalism’ FROM JAMES CAMERON’S
INTRODUCTION
Jungk was born in Berlin in 1913, and grew up there. Owing to his Jewish birth and political opinions he was
deprived of his German nationality by the Nazi regime in April 1933 and was imprisoned in the same year. On
his release, he went to study at the Sorbonne from 1933 to 1936. He worked on documentaries in France and
Republican Spain. After working illegally in Germany he had to move to Czechoslovakia, where he set up an
anti-Nazi agency. When Prague fell, he moved to Switzerland, where he was again imprisoned for a period.
He took his PhD in Modern History at Zurich University and during the war he wrote for Weltwoche and
The Observer. He has written a number of internationally renowned books on the dangers of nuclear power and
nuclear war: Tomorrow Is Already Here, Brighter than a Thousand Suns, Children of the Ashes and The Nuclear State.
He now lives in Salzburg.
FOREWORD
I know why I am writing this foreword: it is an exorcism, a penance. I dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima.
And so did you. If not, it was done in our name. Who pushed the button no longer matters. It never really did.
After less than half a century the words 'atom bomb' and 'nuclear war' have been absorbed into accepted
legend, a sort of macabre mythology; they have now the meaning only of a sort of imprecation, or curse. We
still do not know on whom the curse was visited, except that for a generation \f has inescapably haunted all
mankind - most of whom had no part in it, millions of whom are even now unaware of its existence.
That could have been said of virtually every living soul until that morning of 6 August 1945. Even after that,
much of what had happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki could only be a matter of horrified speculation - and
without any possible grounds of experience. The Atom Bomb was wholly unprecedented; never before in the
history of warfare, indeed of mankind, had a catastrophe of such dimensions been imposed by one society
(which for a long time could not possibly be aware of what it had done) upon another. A handful of
technicians in Washington and Nevada had taken unto themselves a power hitherto reserved for Nature - or
some might say for God - of sending to Doomsday 150,000 human beings in a fraction of a second. It had
never been done before, so no one knew what the result would be.
Nor, for a considerable time, was anyone allowed to know. After the Bomb a wall of secrecy was clamped
around Hiroshima, while the soldiers and the Experts moved in uneasily to find out what they had
wrought. The outside world was aware that it had lived through some sort of shattering military
punctuation-mark, after which nothing in international affairs could ever be the same - but the detail
was shuttered in secrecy, in Security, and, not impossibly, Shame.
That all this finally changed was largely due to the writings
of Robert Jungk. His contribution to our knowledge and
understanding of this special period in our dismal human
record is unique. Not only had this extraordinary aberration
of history never been so well and delicately defined; such a
definition had never previously been even tried. That Hiroshima today is not merely a name, a map-record, a target, a
symbol, but a society of human people of flesh and blood,
selected by fate and a handful of Generals to be the test-tube
for an experiment in destiny, is largely due, today, to the
obsession of this one man.
Over the years Robert Jungk's Children of the Ashes has
achieved such fame and acclaim that it cannot be necessary to
define its purpose, its scope, its origins.
As an articulate Austrian-born anti-Nazi Berliner, Robert
Jungk was marked for the endless pilgrimage of dedicated
European democrats in the Fascist generation - from Germany to France, to Czechoslovakia, back to France, to
Switzerland, to Central Europe as an Observer correspondent,
somehow or other squeezing in a PhD in modern history at
Zurich. It is the familiar story of the committed humanist
who, like many of us, found his focus in the most abrupt and
dramatic demonstration of war taken to its obvious conclusion: elimination. Until 1945 it could have been argued, at
a pinch, that warfare could invoke certain qualities bravery, human dedication, loyalty, personal sacrifice. After
Hiroshima this could no longer ever again be said. From
1945 it became clear that 'war', as the world had known it,
was gone forever; what was left was a finger on a trigger, and
oblivion.
We knew it, and they knew it. And still do, a hundredfold.
But it took Robert Jungk, a generation ago, to tell us what it
would be like.
This book was not Robert Jungk's first essay into this
macabre subject. He had already written his detailed study of
atomic scientists, Brighter than a Thousand Suns. This was, of
course, not enough. He then felt it necessary to examine
equally thoroughly not just what the atomic scientists had
done, but the effects of what they had done on their human
victims and their environment. Thus he went to the obvious
place: Hiroshima, chosen as the scene and subject of the
most terrifying destruction the world has ever known - then, as
indeed now, inhabited by the Children of the Ashes.
Years ago Robert Jungk was one of the first men to realize
that the Bomb and the Hiroshima catastrophe were not, as
most people considered, just a military masterpiece, an
extension and glorification of high explosive, but a phenomenon different not just in degree but in kind from anything
ever seen before, and that after August 1945 nobody, but
nobody, could ever live to see the world the same again.
I can claim - ruefully rather than with pride - to be one of
the few people who have personally witnessed the explosion
of three Atom Bombs. Mine were fired not in anger, but in
rehearsal for anger to come. Two were in the Pacific Ocean
emptiness of the Marshall Islands, in Bikini. (It is to me an
enduring irony that the name should later have been given to a
beach-costume of fun and fantasy. After nearly 40 years the
name still holds horror for me.)
The third was in the empty arid wilderness of Woomera, in
Australia, for which one has fewer regrets. At all three I was
one of the official civilian observers - a privileged
journalist, I was told. I write this today carrying a cancer not
impossibly acquired all those years ago in the lovely-horrible
Pacific atoll of Bikini, or the desert of Australia, or even, just
perhaps, in the poisonous ruins of Hiroshima itself. It is of
absolutely no consequence now. Whatever it was, I must
have asked for it, which the people of Hiroshima did not.
But it was that Bikini experience alone that allowed me to
become part of the original concerned group of people, most
far more distinguished than I, who became the first committee of
CND - the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - which
flourished in the Fifties, faded for a while, and is now in a new
resolution born again, vigorously and meaningfully enough to
have gravely worried the Government of the day. (And,
indeed, not only the British Government, but many of the
European societies who are resentful of becoming, unasked,
launching-pads for the American instruments of the third
World War.)
The Ashes are gone, but the Children remain. At least for a
while.
That minor chapter of major history is why I have returned
so often to Children of the Ashes. It is of course a terrible book in
the sense that it is a record of a time of terror. Even more it is
a compassionate book, written quite bravely at a time when
the Japanese did not evoke much compassion. (Any more,
indeed, than they do now, having not only dired to survive
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also with unexampled resilience
and ingenuity contrived to create an economic and financial
success-story that is the envy of all those who were loudest, in
1945, with their cries of 'Keep the bloody Japs on the floor
forever!')
And it is as true now as it was 50 years ago that the
Japanese are not a people who invite affection, having gone
through an unforgivable cycle: first to be strong and victorious, then to be brutalized and defeated, and finally and
perversely to transcend it all by winning in the end.
None of this was in the mind of Robert Jungk - nor
indeed of anyone - when he wrote his obsessive essays on
the holocaust. The Japanese renaissance was still far in the
future; indeed, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the abject
surrender that followed, almost unimaginable.
No, none of this was in Jungk's mind when he wrote
Children of the Ashes. He was not moralizing - except, perhaps, by
implication. His purpose was to describe a unique human
aberration, only later to become the totally dominant factor of
international life. In his time Robert Jungk could not know any more than anyone could know - that Hiroshima was no
more than a hint of what awaits us in the coming nuclear war,
when one single weapon can have the power of a thousand
Hiroshima bombs, and when we are asked to envisage a
thousand of these exploding in a few minutes. It must never
be forgotten that in the days of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
there was still a reasonably functioning outside world that
could come to the rescue. This will of course be out of the
question in a future nuclear war. There will be no surviving
human community to come to the rescue. There will, in
short, be no Robert Jungks.
One of the Japanese survivors of the Bomb quoted by
Jungk in this book was Haruo Hiyoshi, a photographer for
the local paper Chugodu Shimbun. At the time, he walked
back and forth through the ruins of the desolate city, carrying
his camera but taking few photographs. 'I was ashamed,' he
said, 'to give permanence on film to what my eyes were
forced to see.'
'If only he had mastered his honourable repugnance!'
writes Robert Jungk, 'Posterity would then have been given a
far more adequate picture of the "new weapon's" effect than is
to be derived from those much-reproduced photographs
which usually depict Hiroshima after the disaster as a desert of
ruins, without human beings. For it was no quick and total
death, no heart attack of a whole city, no sudden, agonizing
ending that struck Hiroshima. A mercifully quick release,
such as is granted even to the vilest criminals, was denied to
the men, women and children of Hiroshima. They were
condemned to long-drawn-out agonies, to mutilation, to
endless sickness. No, neither during the first hours nor the
days that followed was Hiroshima a "silent graveyard", filled
solely with the mute protest of the ruins, as the misleading
photographs imply; rather was it the site of movements
repeated a hundred thousand times, of a million agonies
that filled morning, noon and night with groans, screams,
whimperings, and crowds of cripples. All who could still run,
walk, hobble or even drag themselves along the ground were
searching for something, for a few drops of water, for food,
for medicine, for a doctor, for the pitiful relics of their
possessions, for shelter. Or searching for the uncountable
thousands who need no longer suffer, for the dead .. .'
It is impossible to summarize Robert Jungk's book. It was of
its time, and for its time, which was a time of a world in
trauma but still, erratically, our world. It is arguably not
immortal literature, but it is superb historical journalism,
sensitively translated by Constantine FitzGibbon. Most
importantly, it had not been done before, nor has been since.
Hiroshima was what the American military psychiatrist
Robert Jay Lifton called 'the immersion in death'. Lifton
went on to describe how his feelings about Hiroshima were
multiplied later by the appalling US atrocity in My Lai,
Vietnam. 'One makes these decisions out of a sense of fitness
rather than out of any kind of altruism or special moral
virtue. If one is to grasp holocaust from a distance, one must
at some inner level decide to become a "survivor" of the
holocaust, and take on the "survivor's mission" of giving it
form in a way that contributes to something beyond it.'
Which is what Robert Jungk did.
Whatever the rights and wrongs, the wretchedness and
hypocrisies of the Japanese War - and being neither a
philosopher nor a military historian I find them at this remove
irrelevant - the Hiroshima Bomb brought a full-stop to all
our considerations of warfare. It can be eliminated now, but
never forgotten. The terrible thing is not that it has become
forgotten, but that it is now wholly recognized, not as man's
assumption of a cosmic right, but as an accepted technique
for the resolution of a preposterous East-West rivalry which is
of zero importance to most of the millions of people on
either side, but which inescapably haunts their lives, and
presages their deaths.
My children are now grown up; they have children of their
own. For all their lives, and their friends' lives, they have
known nothing other than a world that can, and probably
will, destroy itself in the fragmentary part of a second that
will elapse between the finger on the trigger - perhaps by
chance, possibly by nerves, perhaps by hysteria, or increasingly probably by malice and design - and kingdom come.
Children of the Ashes did not foresee this - although in
every page Robert Jungk makes it quite clear that even then
he was aware that he was describing something far greater
than an air raid on a Japanese city. He was defining the
shape of things to come.
Poor Robert Jungk. But fortunate us, to have had him. At
least for a while.
James Cameron
1
When I asked Mr Hiraoka, the editor of Chugoku Shimbun,
Hiroshima's largest local newspaper, which event had most
engaged the attention of his readers during the postwar
years, he replied without any hesitation: 'The rise of The
Carps, our baseball team, from the bottom to the top of the
national league.'
The probable truth of this assertion was confirmed by
nearly all my acquaintances and friends who live in the first
city in the world to have been devastated by an atom
bomb. Nowadays that terrible day, 6 August 1945, is seldom
mentioned openly in the rebuilt industrial metropolis. On the
anniversary of the event which inaugurated a new historical
era, a couple of thousand people gather in 'Peace Park',
listen to speeches and release doves of peace to flutter in the
wind. Then they disperse and everyday life resumes its
course.
'Imagination is one of the least developed human faculties.
The strongest is that of forgetfulness.' With these words
Philip Noel-Baker, British ex-Minister and Nobel Peace
Prize winner, concluded his address in August 1977 to an
international congress on the damage and after-effects of
nuclear annihilation. Hiroshima ought to have been a memorial. It became a classic example of suppression. It ought to
have been disquieting - and instead it has propagated false
hope because of it's impressive material reconstruction. The
'Never again!' proclaimed by the eye-witnesses and contemporaries of the catastrophe has given way to a resigned or
even aggressive 'Perhaps tomorrow'.
But in Japan, after the lifting of the Allied-imposed
censorship of the early postwar years, thousands of poems,
personal accounts, photos, films, essays, novels, drawings
and paintings were produced, seeking to depict and
communicate the atomic horror. Countless public events
were held and powerful demonstrations occurred all over
the world against nuclear rearmament and the atomic threat.
Has it all been in vain? When I discussed this worrying
question at the beginning of the 1980s with hibakushas
(survivors), who today still bear the emotional and physical
scars of 'that day', one of them said: 'Surely nowadays
everyone on this planet is a htbakusha - it's just that most of
them don't realize it. Their bodily defences are assaulted all
over the world by radio-active rays unleashed by nuclear
tests and by the nuclear industry. Emotionally they are still
more deeply affected, because they can suppress the fear of
"new Hiroshimas", but not really get rid of that fear as long as
nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors still exist.'
In every industrial state both public and private concerns,
with considerable resources at their disposal, are devoting
themselves to the campaign against these deep-seated apprehensions. This propaganda has been conducted with particular
intensity in Japan. In order to counteract the popular
comic strip Hadashi no Gen, which related the adventures
and sufferings of a seven-year-old boy in a devastated
Hiroshima, the electricity industry gave away cheerful picture
books representing 'the atom' as 'the good fairy of progress'.
Every year on 26 October Japan celebrates 'Atom Day', and
all over the country the Government puts up posters from
which pretty girls and sentimental lovers proclaim that thensecurity and prosperity depend upon the 'energy-contributing
atom'.
Today the island empire is in fact the country with the
second most nuclear reactors in the world. While the building
of reprocessing plants to produce weapons-grade plutonium
was temporarily shelved in the USA, big Japanese industrialists
were keen to build such a plant in Tokai with French aid,
and hoped to place themselves in the vanguard of the
'plutonium era'. The fact that they would then at any time
easily be able to produce their own atom bombs fitted in with
the 'grand plan' for industrial leadership once again to make
Nippon the dominant military power in Asia.
Only quite late in the day did the opponents of nuclear
weapons in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Osaka, Tokyo and other
Japanese cities, who had long been quarrelling among themselves, understand that the campaign against the Bomb had to
be widened to include the struggle against the plants of the
'peaceful' nuclear industry. Hiroshima houses the head office
of the Chugoku Electric Power Company, which has had to
build its nuclear plant a hundred kilometres away from
Hiroshima in Shimane, because it cannot (or cannot yet)
force such a project on the residents of its home-town, and it
was in Hiroshima that young anti-nuclear campaigners
succeeded, by means of a lengthy sit-down strike, in extracting
the hitherto secret emergency plans for a catastrophe. With
their own eyes they were able to read that evacuation of the
population would only begin once radiation had risen to the
level it reached in 1945 a mere 1,500 metres from the centre
of the bomb's explosion.
Through mounting opposition to increased nuclear power
construction and its possible and indeed probable feedback
into nuclear weapons, the significance of Hiroshima as an
example has been rewon, not just in Japan but all round the
world. Because the destructive long-term effects of the
products of nuclear fission are gradually becoming clear to
the more than 300,000 people who, after nearly four decades,
are still suffering from the effects of the comparatively weak
radiation of that 'primitive' bomb. Ill effects which may take
fifteen, twenty or even more years before revealing themselves
among workers in newly built nuclear plants or among people
who live close to reactors and reprocessing plants are already
visible and testable in nearly all the involuntary human
guinea-pigs who were in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 or
who visited the city shortly afterwards to look for missing
people. Every one of these sick, ailing, prematurely aged or
incurable people is a clear, visible warning of ill effects which
are developing (at the moment invisibly) in nearly everyone
who, often unawares, is exposed to large amounts of nuclear
products in the air or in their food. By not turning away
from these unfortunate people, and by recognizing in their
sufferings a signal which must not be overlooked or ignored,
we can after all give some meaning to their sacrifices,
which in themselves were meaningless. Hajima Yukimune, a
spokesperson for the Hiroshima survivors, has made this
impressively clear. Recently he called upon all hibakushas,
and especially the acutely ill and the aged, to describe in
words or pictures their experiences on and after that fateful
August day in 1945, in order to leave a testament of their
sufferings for all those who nowadays lightly refer to the
necessity of nuclear power and the inevitability of nuclear
war. Although many of those concerned condemned this call as
'heartless', it nevertheless struck a deep chord. When
Yukimune displayed these testimonies at a world conference
meeting in Hiroshima, he compared the road of suffering
trodden by the hibakushas with the martyrdom of Christ:
'Facing death they have published their tragic and painful
experiences in the hope of saving humankind/
Only a fraction of the world's population is likely to
encounter these moving statements. The number of people
who, moved by such experiences, have any chance of
influencing the survival crisis of Earth's inhabitants will in all
likelihood be still smaller. Nevertheless, these messages
communicate the extreme situation of atom bombings, for
which human beings were to blame, and, like trace elements,
their effects enter contemporary consciousness and also help to
make the great powers hesitate hi atomic crises.
The insidious effects of the first nuclear catastrophe, which
have lasted for decades, which are already affecting the
survivors' children and whose taint may yet be passed on
genetically to their children and their children's children,
show us that nuclear disaster differs fundamentally from all
other misdeeds: it cannot be forgotten, even when people
want to forget it.
'I have many sad recollections of my childhood. Since the
third month of my life I have been in poor health. I was not
allowed to go to dancing school. Shortly before the first
performance of our class, I was forbidden to take part. I
was excluded from sports lessons. When there were school
excursions to the mountains, I had to stay at home. I always
felt estranged from all the others. If I accidentally cut myself, a
little swollen cheloid (like those which the survivors of the
bomb had) would develop at once. Even from only a tiny
pinprick. Both my little fingers are too short. So I can't play
the piano or type properly. Sometimes they curl up all of a
sudden. I don't like giving someone my hand, because I am
scared they will notice that there is something not right about
my fingers. My ears are deformed, my body is often swollen.
Where does all this stem from? I don't know. Perhaps from
my parents' genes?'
I met the writer of this letter, a disturbingly beautiful
woman in her mid-twenties, at the home of Dr Tomin
Harada, who has long taken a special interest in the survivors
and their children. Her name is Fusako Ueno, and she is a
protegee of Mary MacmUlan, a white-haired English Quaker
whom I had got to know in Hiroshima twenty-five years
previously as the protectress of my friend Ichiro Kawamoto,
the labourer. 'Fusako was struck with two blows,* said the
missionary. 'Not only have both parents been injured by
radiation, but on top of that she is a "Morinaga" case. As her
mother was not able to breast-feed her, she was fed with
milk powder made by the famous firm of Morinaga, which
still boasts today of its "healthy food for healthy babies".
Traces of arsenic were later found in this baby food. Maybe
Fusako's troubles come from that, and not at all from the
genetic effects of radiation.'
Ms Ueno belongs to the second generation of atomic
victims. Although she was born years after the bombing,
both her parents were employed on 'that day' not far from
the epicentre. Her father as a soldier at the station and her
mother as a nurse in a hospital. 'When as a child I wanted to
know about it in more detail, I got no answer,' the young
Japanese woman told me. 'That was taboo. Only occasionally, if
they heard that yet another hibakusha had died prematurely and
their body was to be collected by the Americans for the
autopsy, would my mother break her silence and remind us,
"Once I am dead, you mustn't hand my body over to the
ABCC (Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission). No one will
understand what we went through. Only those who were
there then".'
If today there are no really unequivocal, conclusive results
from the thirty continuous years of research into the effects of
the bomb, one of the main reasons is that many hibakushas
think and act like this former nurse. They do not wish to let
themselves be used as guinea-pigs. Certainly not by those
who they believe to be interested in such knowledge only
because they want to make more precise calculations of the
risks of nuclear war and nuclear energy for their military and
economic plans.
It can be inferred from their own publications that this is in
fact a significant motive of the American researchers. Thus
in an article for the special number of the English-language
Japanese scientific periodical Journal of Radiation Research
(1975) G. W. Beebe and H. B. Hamilton wrote that further
intensive scientific research on the effects of nuclear radiation
on humans in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was desirable, since
'future demand for energy must to a large degree be satisfied
through the use of nuclear energy'. However, animal
research could give no clear information on the permissible
dose of radiation for human beings.
While the definite increase in cancer rates from somatic
(i.e. direct bodily) radiation is now no longer denied by the
initially euphemistic staff of the American research institute in
Hiroshima, they nevertheless stress again and again that
genetic (and thus hereditary) consequences cannot yet be
confirmed in any significant quantity. This however contradicts all plant and animal research, which has brought to
light defects rarely found in the second generation but
frequently occurring in succeeding generations. Beebe and
Hamilton themselves concede that the fact that no negative
effects are yet observed in humans - as they are in fruit-flies
and mice - can be explained by the incompleteness of the
research carried out so far. The research methods so far
used may not yet be precise enough, and the number of
people examined may not be big enough. In relation to
hereditary defects, the leading Japanese specialists in the
field (Kusano, Ljima, Ishida and Shohno) even warn explicitly
against propagating premature false optimism (as the advocates of nuclear power do). In a collective statement on the
'Medical Effects of Atom Bombs' (1977) they explicitly admit:
'The absence so far of genetic effects in the descendants of
the survivors cannot yet be taken to imply that the mutational
effect of ionizing radiation does not exist for human beings.'
Do the research methods used so far in Hiroshima conform at
all to the best level of knowledge available? This is doubted by
such critical researchers as for example the American nun
Rosalie Bertell, head of a recognized biological research
department in Buffalo. In October 1979, after her return
from Hiroshima, she observed: 'It is impossible to assess
correctly the inherited radiation in the second generation of
Japanese atom bomb survivors without access to basic data.
Lesser mutational effects in this population have not been
measured. It is not reasonable to base the judgement of
whether the unborn will be endangered on research reports
which were published after prior screening by the US military
authorities, scientific works which themselves rely on an
inappropriate and truncated data base, on research which
takes into account only the approximate death rate and only
the serious genetic illnesses of the descendants of those
Japanese exposed to radiation.'
Sister Rosalie is therefore demanding a much more comprehensive investigation of the descendants of the bomb
victims with international participation and supervision. Only
in that way will it be possible to reach authentic conclusions.
In 1975 the ABCC renamed and reorganized itself, because it
wished to clear itself of the reputation for bias which had
become attached to it. But the newly founded 'Radiation
Effects Research Foundation' is regarded by the population
of Hiroshima and above all by the hibakushas with the same
mistrust as before. Not least because the concrete personal
experiences of the population with ill people from the supposedly unharmed second generation so clearly contradict the
over-cautious and purposely soothing statements of the
scientists.
C . O . A . ——2
'Will You Still Be Alive Tomorrow?' ('Kimi wa Asu Ikiru
ka') is the title of a collection of essays and personal accounts
published in 1972 by the daughters and sons of atomic
casualties. With it they wanted to gain the recognition which
has again and again been denied them as delayed victims of
the bomb. This younger generation of hibakushas have come
together under the collective name hibaku nisei. A few of
them lived through the Pikadon and the hard succeeding
years as children, others are 'in utero' cases, whose mothers
were pregnant when the disaster struck; there are also young
women and young men like Fusako Ueno who first exhibit
radiation injuries years after the catastrophe.
Fusako described to me how they feel and what they fear: 'I
have studied genetics and physics. The lecturers became
good friends of mine. However they did not answer my most
pressing questions. For example, Professor Naomi Shono,
who wrote the book Radiation and the Atom Bomb. His lectures
also dealt with this. Afterwards I questioned him about my
mother, who won't go to the doctor even though she is
suffering, because she is scared of what he might find wrong
with her. And I also wanted to know if I might be genetically
tainted. But he never gave me a clear answer. The more I
learn about the effects of the bomb, the more uncertain I
become. People calm me down and tell me I came into the
world long after the bombing. But still I am tormented with
doubts. What do my gene cells look like? Might not a few
genes in my body perhaps be deformed? I am scared to
marry and bear a child.'
One of the arguments of American doctors and biologists
against a more comprehensive and wider investigation of the
survivors and their children relies on the observation, in itself
correct, that the 'neuroticization' of the survivors and their
descendants would inevitably be increased by it. But can
this psychological side-effect be avoided? Are rumours and
suspicions not even more stressful? It certainly does not
suffice to assure those who were 'there' and their descendants
that 'only ten per cent' of them proved to have suffered from
the bomb's effects if - as everyone knows - over 300,000
people had to be recognized as kibakushas and not a single
one of them can be considered to be truly healthy; they all
have suffered and still do suffer not only from the biological
effects but also from the sociological and psychological effects of
the abrupt annihilation of their city, their families, their
circles of friends.
Outwardly Hiroshima seems to have forgotten but even
today, apart from the many newcomers, there is nevertheless no
family in which they do not speak almost daily of the
disaster which one single air raid brought to everyone. The
sociologist Professor Yuzaki, who is investigating the social
and psychological effects of the bombing, has assured me of
this. Some people's roads to Calvary have taken on exemplary
meaning for all those who have not suffered the worst - or
have not yet suffered the worst. (That 'not yet' darkens every
prospect.) Thus a youth called Fumilti Nagoya became the
martyr of the hibakusha nisei. Born in August 1960, he was to
become a delayed victim of a war which had ended fifteen
years before his birth. Just before his fifth birthday the
boy contracted leukaemia. He was kept alive with blood
transfusions and was even able to go to school for a short
time. 'Fumi' learned to write and paint there and so when he
was later confined to bed he was able to keep a diary. In
February 1968 this young hibaku nisei died. His parents, who
had recorded every phase of this short life, published in
1968 their account of the boy's sufferings under the tide: 'I
Wanted to Live. The Death of a Hibaku NiseC ('Hibaku
Nisei Fumiki-chan no Shi'). Issued by a large publisher in
Tokyo, this book had so great an impact that as a result the
problems of the 'second generation' of hibakushas were for
the first time discussed throughout Japan. But only in February
1980 did the Japanese Health Ministry finally decide to
have all descendants of atom bomb victims medically
investigated. In the meantime their numbers are estimated at
240,000.
Nearly twelve years elapsed after the end of the war before
the Japanese Parliament and Government at last really took
notice of the existence and the needs of the survivors of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But even then, people affected
physically and mentally by the consequences of the bombing
had great difficulty in gaining recognition as war victims.
364,261 people did receive the 'Health Book for A-Bomb
Casualties', but by March 1976 only 1.2 per cent had in fact
been admitted to the category of 'complete patient'.
Bit by bit the restrictions on compensation have been
somewhat eased under the pressure of public opinion; however, state assistance depends on so many regulations and
checks that up to now only a small proportion of the sufferers
receive an appropriate amount of aid. For example, they have to
demonstrate exactly that on 6 August 1945 (or during the
succeeding fortnight) they were staying no more than two
kilometres away from the epicentre, the point of the
explosion. However, this fact must be confirmed by at least
two witnesses. The people who issued that kind of regulation
knew beforehand how difficult, if not totally impossible, it is to
obtain such testimonies. With it they achieved what they
were no doubt trying to achieve: many of those with claims
for assistance had to waive them.
In newspaper advertisements and on the television screen
there appeared again and again appeals from rejected claimants
for someone to remember them and help them. Only rarely
did people manage to rescue photos of themselves and thenfamilies from out of the hell of that time. So how likely is it that
the necessary witnesses will have survived through decades?
Inevitably this results in hundreds if not thousands of affidavits
being issued as favours. Many humane officials close an eye
to it. But of course there are also officials who are 'correct'
and 'strict'. Only too often they treat the claimants and
their witnesses as potential frauds. When accused of this,
their defence is that otherwise swindlers would enrich
themselves from the allowances given to true claimants.
In postwar Hiroshima's chronicle of scandals, cases of
'assistance fraud* in fact surface regularly. The local press
and local radio occupied themselves for so long and so
minutely with one affair in particular — a municipal supervisor
called Yoshio Tanimoto took small bribes for years, issuing
accommodation certificates in return - that the organization
of hibakushas was finally provoked to launch a counterattack.
They protested at the totally undignified conduct of the
examinations, which they rightly described as an intolerable
humiliation, and demanded that it be stopped. Their argument: even if occasionally a bit too much was paid out, it
would still be almost nothing compared to the billions
squandered by the regime on rearmament.
All these complaints merely led to promises that the
authorization procedures would be eased in future, pledges
that were soon forgotten once more. In the same way the
attempt of the kibakushas to gain satisfaction through the
courts had already been frustrated. Five survivors selected by
their organization brought an action against the United States in
1963 in the Tokyo District Court, with the aim of getting
adequate compensation awarded. Admittedly the judge did
rule that the operation of a weapon whose consequences
were incomparably more destructive and significant than all
others violated international law. But they were not hi a
position to pursue successful claims from that.
If it was hard for the Japanese hibakushas, it was even
worse for their Korean fellow-sufferers. When the bomb fell,
there were about 50,000 Koreans in or near Hiroshima.
Most of them had toiled for the armaments industry and the
military. The Japanese authorities, who treated Korea as a
colony, often forced them against their will to work under
conditions of slavery. Korean girls and women also perished in
the nuclear attack. They had been made to 'serve' in the
soldiers' and sailors' brothels of the garrison town. After the
catastrophe, in which 30,000 to 35,000 of these forced
labourers were probably killed, the surviving Koreans were
left completely to their own devices. And they were discriminated against afterwards as much as before. The old racial
prejudice survived, despite their common suffering. Wherever
possible the Koreans tried to disguise their identity. Many no
longer spoke Korean and had completely adjusted to Japanese
ways. But it was a risky game of hide and seek and most of
these atomic victims eventually returned to North or South
Korea. About 4,000 Korean kibakushas settled in the town of
Kyong Sang do in the Hapchon Region and called then- new
home 'Hiroshima in Korea'. But people 'back home* did not
understand what they had gone through, nor why so many of
them were ill or barely able-bodied. In an account of these
twofold victims drawn up by the reporter Park Su Pok for an
aid committee, she said, 'They feel utterly isolated and
inferior. When they want to speak, the people of this out of
the way mountain region do not understand them. They are
vegetating there: deaf and dumb.'
Many Korean survivors have secretly re-entered the land
of their oppressors without visas and have tried to make a go
of it there. In most cases the motive has been to obtain
medical help for their sufferings in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
But should they be denounced and caught, they are expelled.
Some of these unfortunate people have been expelled from
Japan six or seven times.
Only gradually did a solidarity movement for the Korean
hibakushas develop among a few Japanese. In Hiroshima it
was mainly started by Ichiro Kawamoto, who had served in
the first years after the catastrophe as the leader of the
radiation-sick, then still completely unaided.
The case of the illegally re-entered Korean hibakuska Son
Jin Took caused a sensation even beyond Hiroshima. With
the help of an aid organization he was able to enter a protest
against his expulsion before a court and demand the same
status as the Japanese atomic casualties. The Fukuoka Court
upheld his complaint. However the Japanese Government
did not accept the ruling and lodged an appeal.
This inhuman action of the central authorities was merely
part of a policy of systematically repressing the 'unfortunate
events' connected with the Allied victory and the consequent
capitulation of Greater Japan. Not only have the ruling
Liberal Party and the government it dominates refused to
issue a white paper on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but furthermore they are careful to make sure that Japan's new allies
are not frightened away by the stigma of Hiroshima from cooperating in the development of industrial power which will
dominate the world.
Japanese attempts officially to ignore the frightfulness of
the past went so far that in the early 1970s the mayor in
office at the time, Yamada, tried in every way to prevent an
exhibition about the Nazi gas chambers and the mass murder of
Auschwitz which was planned in Hiroshima. The memories of
the 'holocaust' were to have found a permanent home in the
same 'Peace Museum' where fragments, photos, films and
writings concerning the inferno of the Pikadon are
displayed. But Yamada was of the opinion that such a
gesture might perhaps upset the authorities and inhabitants of
Hanover, Hiroshima's twin city in Germany.
The testimonies of the holocaust which were sent from
Poland to Hiroshima are therefore still stored today in a dark
shed in the town of Kurose, over an hour away from
Hiroshima. Only the urns bearing the ashes of victims of the
Nazis eventually, after months of bureaucratic wrangling,
found a resting place in May 1973 in the cemetery of the
Buddhist Mitakiji Temple, in whose garden many disabled
and dying people had sought refuge in August 1945. So
there, united in death, the victims of the two greatest crimes of
the Second World War now lie.
In February 1980 I went with the lawyer Dr Fujita from
Osaka, who for years has stood up for the rights of atomic
casualties and minorities, to visit the fishers of Ikata who
have fought for ten years against the all-powerful state, and
the nuclear industry united to it, for the preservation of their
fishing grounds. They have erected a small wooden hut on
the Pacific coast not far from the building site where the
gigantic nuclear station is rising. Day and night volunteers
maintain a permanent warning guard here.
About thirty of us - women, children, young and old men were sitting tightly packed together in this hut while a wild
winter storm raged around us, when a man of about thirty
who had not uttered a single word so far made a declaration
which stunned everyone: 'I am really grateful for the bomb.'
When pressed to explain why he had come out with this
shocking statement, he tried to say that in fact people ought
to be glad when a lingering illness bursts conspicuously into
the open, because only then will people begin to combat it
really energetically. The atom bomb ought to be an alarm
signal by which humanity should at last appreciate that
Armageddon is only the inevitable consequence of innumerable earlier everyday acts of destruction.
The speaker, I discovered later, was a country doctor. He
was a member ofjftshu Koza, a popular movement which has
been fighting against environmental pollution and damage
caused by the rapid growth of large-scale industry since the
early 1970s throughout Japan. In fact the movement was first
inspired by the beacon of Hiroshima and the seemingly vain
struggle of the htbakushas. The actions of the Japanese
conservationists have grown in size and determination from
year to year, under the guidance of Jun Ui, an urban
studies specialist who was already thinking and writing about
technology's dependence on power and the consequences of
this when most of his academic colleagues were still keen
supporters of blind progress. The farmers of Narita, who
prevented Tokyo's new airport from opening for years with
help from students and citizens; the inhabitants of the coastal
town of Minamata, who drew the attention of the whole
country to the pollution of their bay with deformation-causing
chemicals by occupying the Chisso plastics factory; the fishers of
Mutsu, who denied the leaking nuclear ship Mittsu Maru
entry into their harbour by making a barrier of hundreds of
boats - these were all hardly conceivable without the earlier
warning of Hiroshima.
Many other things which volunteers attempted, however,
have only half succeeded. For instance, the teachers in
Hiroshima Prefecture have tried hard since the end of the
war to introduce a special subject of 'peace education' into
the curriculum of all Japanese schools. But the central
government and its authorities continued to remove the
chapters on nuclear arms and war hazards, as well as the
descriptions of nuclear weapons, from later editions of the
textbooks. In 1969 the teachers of Hiroshima wrote an
open letter to the Education Minister protesting against this
censorship of learning materials. As a result the six leading
textbook publishers were once more allowed to mention the
taboo subject of atom bombs. Admittedly this was done in so
circumspect and harmless a manner that in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, where children had come to know more about the
terrible truth from their relatives, special textbooks were
written which described in words and pictures the terrors of
nuclear war without glossing over things.
The hope of making Hiroshima a centre of peace research
has so far hardly been fulfilled either. Admittedly there is the
University Institute for Peace Studies, founded in 1970, but it
only has very meagre resources at its disposal and is
endured rather than supported effectively. When I asked one
of the staff why this should be so, he reacted bitterly: 'Don't
you know that peace is a dangerous business, then? At any
rate for many of those who have the say today.'
When I completed the book before you, a book about the
postwar fate of the people and the city of Hiroshima, over
twenty years ago, the Cold War was in full swing. In England
the Easter Marches against the nuclear arms race had
brought hundreds of thousands on to the streets. In the
Federal Republic of Germany, the Kampf den Atomtod movement was still supported by the Social Democratic Party,
which was later to desert it. At that time many who considered
themselves particularly free of illusions already held the
Third World War to be inevitable and opposition to atomic
weapons to be senseless. However there was an unexpected
easing of tension in the 1960s, a development with which the
worldwide protest of innumerable individuals who took a
visible and audible position against 'new Hiroshimas' was
certainly not unconnected.
At this time, when I am writing these lines, the danger of a
war of nuclear annihilation has again been brought very
much closer. But this time almost nobody wants to take it
really seriously any more, because previous experiences have
made us 'hard-boiled'. The position today is actually more
critical than it was then, and too little is being done to
prevent its further deterioration.
For those who bother not to suppress the nuclear threat as
'unthinkable', the greatest worry is caused by the fact that
the constant annual growth and the wider expansion of the
civil nuclear industry also advances the wider expansion of
nuclear weapons. Because however great the efforts to prevent
the secret diversion (in violation of international treaties) or the
theft of 'special nuclear material' from reactors, reprocessing
plants, factories which produce nuclear fuel rods and nuclear
transports, they can never guarantee complete security. New
kinds of reactor like the fast breeder, which produces
quantities of plutonium suitable for the most potent weapons
of mass destruction; new processes like the easier enrichment
of uranium using portable lasers; as well as the fact that more
people in more countries are becoming more familiar with
nuclear technology', increase the probability that we could very
soon find ourselves in a situation where there is no control at
all over the production of atomic weapons. The 'balance of
terror* on which the 'cold peace' of the nuclear generation
has relied up to now is already shaken in theory, and will really
be shaken in a few years.
To this it must be added that the fear of nuclear war and
its consequences no longer seems as great as it did in the
years when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still actual,
witnessed stories and not merely related ones. In February
1980, 650 doctors gathered in the American university town of
Cambridge to discuss how to get across to people of the
younger generation what dreadful consequences would ensue
after just one nuclear attack; an action which many today are
already recommending as a 'quick solution' to 'clear up
intolerable situations'. Dr James Muller, a professor at Harvard Medical School, summed up his colleagues' conclusions
thus: 'We doctors know what an irradiated patient looks like.
Therefore we want to tell people in the USA and the Soviet
Union what hundreds of thousands of such atomic victims
would look like.'
The American Medical Association intends to hold each
year from now on a joint conference with their Soviet
colleagues on the likely effects of the use of hydrogen and
neutron warheads. Japanese doctors will be consulted ‘as
representatives of the only country which has suffered an
atomic attack'. 'It is our intention,' said Muller during an
interview with Michael Getler of the Washington Post, 'to
draw attention very emphatically to the consequences of the
arms race and of nuclear war, and thus to introduce a new
element into arms control negotiations.'
This 'new element’ might be continual opposition to the
bomb by the citizens of all countries. It must be made clear to
them that above all the 'atomic threat' cannot be compared
with any previously known accidental or military danger,
because it brings in its train damage which cannot be
repaired.
The sad fate of the slowly dying people of Hiroshima and many today think they would have been luckier if they
had been killed immediately by the bomb attack of 6 August
1945 - is the writing on the wall telling us that we must
again remonstrate with the forgetful, the indifferent and all
those who speak thoughtlessly of 'unavoidable risks'.
II
Void and Chaos
(1945)
THE BOOK
1
I was looking for Kazuo M. and my guide was the prison
chaplain, Yoshiharu Tamai. His is a narrow-chested house,
33 Ichome Ohtemachi, located only a few yards from what
was once the centre of the atomic explosion. It is there that
he lives and there too, whenever his heavy duties permit, he
holds religious services in a meticulously clean chapel, bleached white.
This man of God, living a life of self-chosen poverty,
enjoys, by reason of his vocation, a reputation among' his
fellow-citizens which unlocks souls that are normally closed
and silent. That is why my friend and interpreter, Willie
Togashi, who had accompanied me on my quest to Hiroshima, was of the opinion that the Reverend Tamai would
probably be able to answer a question which I had hitherto
asked in vain - namely what traces the Hiroshima catastrophe
had left in the minds and souls of the survivors.
We climbed the narrow stairs to the parson's workroom.
No sooner had he heard from the interpreter the nature of
my request than he began to hunt through a briefcase, from
which he extracted a long, already yellowing manuscript,
dated 1955. This he laid upon a 'table' made of whitelacquered packing-cases, and immediately started to thumb
through it.
'This is a letter written in the town prison,' Tamai
explained, 'but the writer did not want the fact to be
immediately apparent. Therefore he didn't give the prison as
his address, but only the street number of his "home".'
The beginning of the letter, in which the writer excused
himself for not having written earlier and explained that like
all his fellow-prisoners he had been suffering from a temporary
eye infection, was rapidly translated by Togashi. But then he
suddenly stopped.
'What is it? Willier' I asked.
He laughed, with a certain embarrassment, and said:
Deeper are the heart wounds.
Will they ever heal?
'It's not very friendly, what he writes next...'
'Not very friendly to whom?’
'Well, to tell the truth, he has some nasty things to say
about Mrs Roosevelt.'
'What has Mrs Roosevelt got to do with it?'
'She must have been visiting Hiroshima just before he
wrote this letter. I myself remember that she went to considerable pains to explain to us precisely why the Americans had
dropped the atom bomb.'
I insisted that Togashi continue to translate the letter, no
matter how embarrassing it might be for him to do so. Like
all 'Westerners' visiting Hiroshima I had been astonished by
the speed with which the sorely stricken population of that
town had overcome all feelings of hatred. But was this
attitude genuine? Now at last I was offered a glimpse of what
was going on behind the 'Curtain of Politeness*.
'Actually it's only a few poems,1 Willie explained. He
wished to diminish their unpleasant effect in advance. 'Kazuo
M. - that's the writer's name - begins by asking the parson to
explain what the meaning of the word "Trinity" is. And
then, only then - ' my interpreter stopped to draw breath,' -he
goes on to quote a few poems for which he had won some sort
of prize in a prison competition. If you permit, I shall now
do my best to translate one of these:
The great mushroom cloud has swallowed me Do not look away, Mrs Roosevelt: Within its
darkness lie I all my life.
should I read on?'
'Yes, please.'
'In the next verse he speaks of a friend, Yasuji, who died
on "that day" with curses on his lips. Then another four
lines addressed to Mrs Roosevelt. He asks her sarcastically if
the ruins of Hiroshima were intended to serve as signposts
on the road to peace. And this ... I believe that this is what
you're really looking for:
Not on the skin alone
Suppurate pustules.
'Yes,' remarked the Reverend Tamai, 'Kazuo often spoke to
me about his "Cheloid of the Heart" - cheloids, as you
doubtless know, are what they call the great, puffy burn scars
that a few survivors still carry with them to this day. In his
opinion had it not been for the deep spiritual wounds inflicted
upon him on the day of the Pikadon and in the weeks that
followed immediately after, he would never have become
what he now is: a murderer, and worse than a murderer for there is no point in beating about the bush - a common
thief who murdered in order to steal.'
A few days later I found myself seated in the office of the
Educational Director of Hiroshima Prison, a certain Mr
Kawasaki. The man sitting opposite me, aged about thirty,
was not at all my idea of a dangerous criminal, sentenced to
life imprisonment. In his simple blue prison uniform, with
his fine, shaven head slightly bowed, he was more like a
monk who had sought and found refuge from an overoppressive world behind his monastery walls.
As soon as the prisoner had entered the waiting-room
with its Western-style plush-upholstered furniture, I had
been impressed by the intelligence and sensitivity of his facial
expression. During the conversation that ensued I had ample
opportunity to observe the mobility of his features, unusual
among Japanese, for I could not understand the words
he spoke and therefore tried, from mime and gesture, to
understand something of what he was saying before the
interpreter gave me the translation.
At this time Kazuo M. had already been living behind
prison walls for close on seven years. It seemed to me as
though he had waited all this time for the opportunity of
finding somebody to whom he could pour out his heart, and
since the chance had at last come to speak about the events
which had led him ultimately to this gloomy building, he
was visibly the prey to profound and strong emotions. But
whenever the interpreter turned away from the convict, in
order to tell me what he had just said and to await my next
question, I could see how Kazuo M. made use of this brief
respite to regain his self-control and master his feelings: his
face might have been twisted with hatred, anger, disgust or
shame, but gradually he would force it to display, not quite
convincingly, an expression of calm, of peace, of unconcern.
I have described the personal effect that he made upon me
because this was the first occasion on which I saw what I was
later Co come upon again and again, and far more clearly, in
reports, letters, diaries and the written answers to my
questionnaires: here was a man who was trying with all his
might, indeed almost desperately, to achieve mastery over
himself and what had happened to him. Again and again he
would jump to his feet, walk rapidly up and down the room,
become upset and stop, collapse into his chair, force himself to
his feet again, think to overcome his emotions but instead be
overcome by them, jump up once more ...
He frequently recalled to my mind that naked, hairless
and eyeless horse that so many of the survivors claimed to
have seen in the ruined streets of Hiroshima during the first
days after the disaster. Its long skull was encrusted with
blood, for it was continually colliding with the few walls and
ruined houses that were still standing; it would stumble on,
wandering to the irregular rhythm of its hoof beats, now with
flaring, puffing nostrils, now with sunken head, now walking,
now mournfully trotting, on and on through the city as it
searched for a stable that was no longer there. Some said
that the animal should be shot, lest in its blindness it tread
upon one of the wounded lying by the roadside and kill him.
But at that time no one had the strength to do so. It is not
known what happened to the horse in the end, nor where it
disappeared to.
Nine days after the destruction of Hiroshima, Kazuo M.,
who had only just escaped destruction himself, wilfully
destroyed the sole remaining object in his possession that
had survived.
He carried out this act calmly, deliberately, with almost
ceremonial gestures, yet even then his handsome, oval face
must have borne that expression of gloom and hatred which
was henceforth to be noticed, or so they said, by well-nigh
anyone who ever met Kazuo M.
The victim of this first premeditated 'murder’ - for so was
the deed later referred to in retrospect - was a book. And a
perfectly ordinary book at that, a reader issued to the Middle
Schools, a book which at that time every boy in the Third
Form throughout the whole of Japan had to possess.
The fourteen-year-old boy had come upon the book a fewdays after the great disaster, when digging in the rubble that
had once been his parents' home. When it fell out of a halfburned rucksack he had cried aloud for joy and had pressed it
to his breast, as though it were a school friend whom he
had believed dead but who had been miraculously saved.
Kazuo M. knew entire poems, proverbs, even whole passages of
prose in the reader by heart. During the last few, terrible
hours he had recited some of these aloud as if they were
magic spells, but only now, when he saw them in black and
white within the sturdy, green, speckled covers of this volume,
did he feel reassured: now he knew that on the far side of
the desolate nightmare that was the present and the immediate
past there must indeed once have existed a world of
perfected form and pure civilization.
Books and pictures, writing brushes and painter's chalks
had always been the boy's best friends and playmates. The
sensitive, introspective child had outgrown his contemporaries.
Only Yasjuji, his sole friend, could in some ways glimpse and
share the delights that the other boy found in the
shimmering world of the poets and painters.
Kazuo was torn from this life among words and drawings
when the Japanese warlords, in a last and already hopeless
effort, mobilized the adolescents and drafted them to work in
the munition factories. He was sent to the book-keeping
department of the Mitsubishi shipyards, about one hour's
travel by tram from his parents' home.
Even at this distance, in the suburb of Furue, miles from
the centre of the explosion, the gigantic force of the blast
had been felt and within seconds had turned everything
topsy-turvy that stood in its way. Never would Kazuo forget
the flash of piercing light, which might have been reflected
from the flat of some enormous, polished, naked sword, nor
the dull reverberation far away, Do ... doo ... which as it
drew close was transformed into a sharp, painful and finally
screeching Ju ... inn that seemed to pierce through his
eardrums, and which culminated in a sound like a thousand
thunder-claps, Gwann! that hurled him into a bottomless
abyss. From this derives the Japanese word Pikadon, for pika
means lightning and don thunder. Then, like an apparition in
a dream, he had seen the paper-white face of Miss
Shimomuro.
She was hurrying as usual, a businesslike little figure who
had just emerged from the boss's office, an account-sheet in
her hand, and was coming through the door into the big
room where the clerks worked. She suddenly stopped, her
expression turning to one of annoyance as if irritated by the
scene of deplorable disorder that met her eyes: the white
pieces of paper whirling across the room, the telephones
jolted from their cradles, the trickles of black and red Indian
ink. She seemed to be on the point of turning on her heels
when, with a scream of pain she could no longer control, her
twisted body fell quickly forwards: a great splinter of glass,
shaped like a fishtail, had pierced her back and now pinned
her to the ground; it continued to vibrate, with a curious,
high and extraordinarily delicate note.
The speed with which the pool of blood spread about her;
the way her hands turned blue; the senseless running hither
and thither of the other secretaries, with their black hair
flying loose and their normally spotless white blouses stained
with blood and filth; the helpless expression on the face of
the chief clerk.
'Kacho-san, you must help her! Do something. Or she'll
die.1 Forgetting all the rules of politeness, Kazuo had shouted
this at his superior: but this man, usually so filled with
energy, had simply leaned motionless against his overturned
desk. He could not grasp what had happened. He did not
even try to stem the flow of blood trickling down his own
face from the deep wound in his forehead.
The youth was still quite numb, but apparently uninjured.
He jumped up and tried to draw out the cruel glass stiletto.
He cut his hands and he could no longer grip it. So he
wrapped a piece of cloth about the glass, that continued to
vibrate, and tugged at it with all his strength.
The glass broke in his cut hands. At least a third of it
remained in the wound. Miss Shihomuro's mauve lips opened
and closed like gills as she gasped for breath. Then a tremor
passed through her body, accompanied by a rattling sound.
She was dead.
For many years Kazuo M. dared not summon up the memory
of the horrors through which he had had to live on his way
from the Mitsubishi Works through the panic-filled city. He
had somehow managed at last to reach the quarter below
Hijiyama Hill, where he lived. He had made it on foot and in
his arms he was carrying the naked corpse of Sumiko, a girl
with whom he had been to school. Mortally wounded, she
had attached herself to him at some point during his passage
through hell. Now he found the strength somehow to burn
and bury her body. And somehow he survived the days that
followed. His parents, too, and his younger sister Hideko
had also been almost miraculously spared. They ate cold
rice, pressed into balls and distributed by emergency mobile
canteens. They slept in what had been an air-raid shelter, an
unlit hole in the ground. This was a time of absent-minded
handshakes, of wanderings as through a maze. Hair fell out,
there was nausea and shivering fevers. And the most important
thing was not to think deeply about the wounds being
inflicted by the unspeakable events all about. To sleep, to
sleep, to sleep!
Haruo Hiyoshi was a cameraman employed by the leading
Hiroshima newspaper Chugoku Shimbun. During those days
he walked back and forth through the ruins of the desolate
city, carrying his camera, but he took only a few photographs.
As he explained to me later: *I was ashamed to give permanence on film to what my eyes were then forced to see.'
If only he had mastered his honourable repugnance!
Posterity would then have been given a far more adequate
picture of the 'new weapon's' effect than is to be derived
from those much-reproduced photographs which usually
depict Hiroshima after the disaster as a desert of ruins,
without human beings. For it was no quick and total death, no
heart attack of a whole city, no sudden, agonizing ending that
struck Hiroshima. A mercifully quick release, such as is
granted even to the vilest criminals, was denied to the men,
women and children of Hiroshima. They were condemned to
long-drawn-out agonies, to mutilation, to endless sickness. No,
neither during the first hours nor in the days that followed
was Hiroshima a silent 'graveyard', filled solely with the mute
protest of the ruins, as the misleading photographs imply;
rather was it the site of movements repeated a hundred
thousand times, of a million agonies that filled morning,
noon and night with groans, screams, whimperings, and of
crowds of cripples. All who could still run, walk, hobble or
even drag themselves along the ground were searching for
something, for a few drops of water, for food, for medicine,
for a doctor, for the pitiful relics of their possessions, for
shelter. Or searching for the uncountable thousands who
need no longer suffer, for the dead.
Even in the unending nights, beneath the bluish glow
reflected from the piles of corpses that the clearance squads
had stacked with military precision, this whimpering, helpless
hurrying hither-and-thither never stopped.
On the morning of 15 August 'Announcement Teams' of
military policemen drove through the vast field of ruins
and broadcast the following statement: 'Attention everyone,
attention. Today at twelve noon the Emperor in person will
make an important announcement over the radio. All who
are capable of moving should make their way to the railway
station, where the Emperor's speech will be relayed over the
loudspeaker system.'
It is true that Kazuo M. was extremely weak. Nevertheless, he
dragged himself to the station, in order to hear what the
announcement might be. For like many others he thought
that the 'Tenno' was going to announce final victory. A few
hundred persons, in rags, wounded, sick, leaning on sticks or
crutches, were gathered on the square facing the ruined
station.
From the loudspeaker there came first of all a confused
medley of strange and meaningless noises. When at last the
Emperor's clear, light voice became audible, it seemed to
tremble, almost as though he were on the verge of tears:
'Prepare to endure the unendurable ...'
What had he meant? None of the audience had understood
exactly what it was that he had actually said. Perhaps the
faulty transmission was to blame, or the fact that the language of
the court was hard for the ordinary man in the street to
follow? Or perhaps it was simply impossible for their senses to
grasp the meaning of a statement that they had hitherto held
to be an impossibility?
The man who subsequently became Mayor of Hiroshima,
Shinzo Hamai, had listened to the speech in the ruins of the
Town Hall, and he recalls: 'Maybe something had gone
wrong with the batteries, or with the loudspeaker itself, but in
any event the broadcast was completely incomprehensible. I
asked an official afterwards what it had actually been about. He
answered without any apparent interest: "It seems we've lost
the war." I was simply unable to believe this.'
Those who had listened to it in the square opposite the
station quickly ceased to doubt. Part of the crowd broke into a
storage shed in the depot where they got drunk on the
stocks of rice wine that they found there. Others burst into
tears, and many beat the singed ground, in despair, with
their burned fists. The majority, however, simply slipped
silently away, resigned to their fate.
Kazuo M. was one of those for whom the horrors of the
immediate past only became the reality when he had heard
those words. For nine days he had found consolation in the
thought that the nightmare must end. Only now did his heart
and mind grasp the full meaning of what his eyes had long
been telling him: the world of yesterday, the world that had
existed between the covers of his reader, was no more. This
was the moment at which he became filled with an overwhelmingly strong compulsion: he must 'execute' that book.
Not a single line of writing should be allowed to 'escape
punishment'. He was determined to tear each and every one of
its pages into such tiny shreds that nothing should remain
legible. When anything even resembling what had happened to
him on 'that day' could occur - could be allowed to occur then all the words in his beloved reader were nothing but
lies. After that, what value could be attached to thought, to
knowledge? What did he care henceforth for morality, social
position, the law? At the top of his voice he yelled into the
vast emptiness that now surrounded him: 'Otonawa-baku! All
men are fools!'
Hundreds and hundreds of printed lines. How is it possible to
press so many into so small a book? For a moment Kazuo let
his hands drop to his sides, suddenly overcome by the
senselessness, the pointlessness, of what he intended to do.
Then from a nearby cave-dwelling in the side of Hijiyama
Hill he heard the shrill and helpless cry of. a little girl: (to,
itai! It hurts, it hurts!' and he remembered little Sumiko,
whom he had carried through the burning town.
Death to all words! To hell with them all! The tiny white
scraps of paper fluttered like snowflakes to the scorched
earth, a miniature blizzard that had blown weirdly into this
burning August. The boy jumped to his feet and began to
chase them. As he did so, he yelled crazily.
THE ATOMIC DESERT
1
There are deserts of sand, deserts of stone, deserts of ice.
But since August 1945, Hiroshima - or more exactly the
spot where Hiroshima once stood - has constituted a new,
peculiar and original sort of wilderness: anatomic desert, the
handiwork of homo sapiens, and beneath its grey-black surface
there still remain the traces of his activity and the pitiful
remnants of his fellow-men.
The survivors, and the tens of thousands who lived elsewhere who had come to dig among the ruins for relatives
and friends, gradually moved outwards in their search, away
from the inner 'Circle of Death* until they were digging one,
two and even three miles away from the point of maximum
destruction. And the Circle of Death, this evil, harrowed,
desolate expanse, now lay lifeless, enclosed within the green
waters of the many-mouthed River Ohta, upon whose surface, with each ebb and flow of the tide, corpses, like autumn
leaves, floated now upstream, now down: strangely enough
the male corpses all floated upon their backs, the female
ones upon their bellies.
Only a handful of foolhardy men now ventured into this
no-man's-land. They dug in the ruins, searching for any
buried object that might be sold for money,
It was in little groups of three or four people that they thus
searched for loot, and they soon acquired a remarkable
knowledge of the terrain. They were particularly on the lookout
for metals, since any form of scrap possessed a rarity value
after all the years of collecting and commandeering for the
metal-hungry forces of Japan, What they searched for with
especial thoroughness beneath the ashes and charred beams
were old bathrooms. For many a household had managed
throughout all the war years to preserve its goemon-buro, or
deep, copper hip-bath, and these were now worth almost
their weight in gold.
Another explorer of this wilderness was a slender man
with moustache and spectacles who wore a white laboratory
coat that did not at all go with his military cape and puttees.
He too collected busily and went home each evening to his
family in the fishing village of Kuba with a full rucksack and
bulging haversack. But when he emptied his loot on to the
tatami at home, it contained almost nothing that could be
sold. For what he had collected was simply stones, of all
sorts and sizes.
Professor Shogo Nagaoka was a well-known geologist
attached to Hiroshima University, and it is thus scarcely a
matter of surprise that it was his custom, with pick and
shovel, to search for fossils, minerals and petrifactions. Only
nowadays it was not some patch of virgin soil that he dug,
but rather did he pick busily away at a place where, only a
few days before, the centre of a great city had stood.
When the treasure-hunters' met the scholar they always
asked him the same question. Seriously meant to begin with, it
had become a sort of standard joke between them. 'Why
don't you join in with us, Professor? You know all this area
by now like the back of your hand. Just tell us when you find
metal. There'd be a fortune in it for you.'
To which Nagaoka would reply: 'Come over here, and I'll
tell you where I've seen some.'
Naturally it never occurred to the scholar to take the cut in
the profits that they offered him. But he did ask for something in
return. This was that they should hand over to him any
well-preserved shadows. For that was what he was looking
for above all else in the atomic desert. It is well known that
the exceptionally brilliant light cast by the Pikadon had
bleached everything it touched. Thus whenever a plant, an
animal or a human being happened to be in front of a flat
surface a 'shadow* would be cast, often as clear cut as a
silhouette, an unbleached area upon a whitened background.
When the metal-seeker came upon the outline of a leaf, a
hand, a head on a piece of rubble they would bring it to the
scholar, or would lead him to the spot. In exchange he would
give them information that was of value, as for example:
'Over there, the mound of rubble beside the third treestump, you'll find a saucepan,' or: 'It'd be worth your while
to dig in the second rubble heap on the left beyond the next
crossroads.'
Apart from such shadows of living creatures and of objects
turned to charcoal by the heat of the atomic flash, the
professor also collected hundreds of other specimens materials which had not been destroyed, but only transmuted or
changed in the huge blast furnace that had been the
explosion. These included weirdly coloured earthenware tiles,
bottles twisted into extraordinary shapes, singed fragments of
cloth, and an ever increasing quantity of stones. And what
stones! Stones such as existed nowhere else on earth. In the
uniquely high temperature produced by the atom bomb they
had begun to 'weep' or to 'bleed'. This was clearly apparent
when one of these stones was dissected. The deep black
centre remained intact, but part of this core had forced its
way through the light grey surface to emerge as boils or
sores. It was as if the very stones had contracted mange or
leprosy. The geologist's attention had first been drawn to
these abnormal mutations on the day after the disaster, when
he walked through the still burning city preoccupied only
with the fate of his students and of his collection of minerals
that had been in the university. To be precise - and I am
now quoting Nagaoka, who says this with a self-deprecatory
smile - he had not at first seen the novel, amazing, unprecedented change that had come over the stones of Hiroshima,
but rather had he felt their strange alteration.
For when he decided to collapse, exhausted, upon the
base of an old stone lantern near the ruins of the Gokoku
shrine, he was forced to jump up again at once. It was as
though he had sat upon a pin-cushion.
What he now saw was so remarkable, so unexpected, that
he automatically gave a loud cry of astonishment: the normally
smooth granite had thrust out countless tiny needles of
stone. The overpowering heat had, apparently, caused it
momentarily to melt and a wave-pattern remained, revealing
the directions in which the liquefied stone had begun to run
away.
The scholar recognized at that moment, and before he
knew anything concerning the nature of the bomb that had
been dropped on Hiroshima, that he was here confronted with
something absolutely new, that something must have
happened which was, quite literally, astonishing, and that it
was his duly to begin forthwith with the study of these
unusual phenomena.
Nagaoka's normal equipment consisted of a small pickaxe,
such as geologists and mineralogists carry on field trips, a
simple camera and a 'dip', which is a sort of carpenter's
plumb-line, with which he could measure the degree of
inclination of wall remnants, gravestones, posts and trees.
This searcher among ruins also carried a few pieces of cloth
or of paper in which he carefully wrapped those specimens he
was taking home.
In a work1 that contains hundreds of precise drawings and
photographs this man of science later proved his statement
that he had collected no less than 6,542 fragments of rubble
within the thousand-yard-wide area beneath the epicentrum:
these he described, and their places of origin were marked
upon his map. Eight hundred and twenty-nine of these
specimens were then subjected to a more detailed examination. The professor was thus enabled not only to describe
exactly the varying degrees of liquefaction and surface
mutation suffered by numerous types of stone, but also, with
the help of the shadows preserved upon the stones and the use
of trigonometry, to ascertain the precise height at which the
bomb had exploded - something which the Americans had
kept strictly secret. Stone objects such as temple walls and
gravestones, already worked by the hands of men, were
tossed backwards within a fraction of a second by the new
weapon into the conditions that had prevailed upon earth in
geological epochs long ago. Or was what he here saw and
noted merely a forecast of a future in which mankind would
have transformed this world into a ball of fire?
1
Shogo Nagaoka: The Measurement of the Hypocentre and the Landsite of
the Hypocentre by the Atomic Bomb dropped in Hiroshima.
The scope of his researches was soon widened. Professor
Nagaoka now began to collate everything that had any
connection with 'that day'. The geologist became an historian, or
perhaps archaeologist would be a more accurate word. For
he now disinterred, with the utmost care, the skeletons of the
dead; like the first excavators of that ashen cemetery that had
once been Pompeii, he found the dead sometimes in the
posture of flight, sometimes intertwined in a last and
desperate embrace. He collected clocks whose hands had
stopped forever at the precise moment of the disaster,
banknotes and the leaves of books carried by the firestorm
miles out into the encircling countryside. He devoted
particular attention to those tiles which bore family emblems,
for these were often the sole trace that such a family had
ever existed. In his home the piles of fragments and remnants
grew taller, memorials to a technological civilization entering
the suicidal phase: ulcerated gas-cookers, bicycles turned to
corkscrews, a section of a motor-car engine into which was
horribly fused the skeleton hand of the mechanic who had
been tinkering with it, Demiurge, surprised and turned to
coke. It was a wretched heap, quite devoid of the dignity that
we associate with the ruins of antiquity, grotesque memorials of
perishable materials, dead and done with.
The professor came upon some forty corpses to whom he
gave the last rites. He also found the first clear signs of
renascent life: a thick covering of that 'railway grass* which
had been imported from the USA in the previous century to
cover and bind railway embankments, and seeds that were
sprouting, and live pollen, and certain trumpet-shaped, red,
mountain flowers such as had never before been seen in the
lowlands around Hiroshima. These were growing from the
mountain clay which had once been brick walls. Many years
ago the seeds had been baked hard in the reddish earth that
had been brought down from the mountains. Now the
explosion had liberated them, while the heat and the rays
had caused them to flower. Even in the pond of the destroyed
castle fresh lotus flowers had sprung from the rusty-black,
parched leaves.
When, as was usually the case, the professor took his
family with him on these expeditions, it was their habit to
stop at a place which had previously been one of the
most frequented squares of the city near the tramway stop
Kamiyacho. There they would build a little fire and roast the
sweet potatoes of which the professor had discovered a store,
each as big as a man's thumb, at the foot of a memorial
commemorating the dead of the Russo-Japanese War. He
could even find his sweet potatoes after dark, for nearby and
for weeks on end there burned a gigantic cedar tree, a
powerful beacon above the sea of ruins.
When Shogo Nagaoka stood at the centre of that 'Place of
Suffering' whose bourns lay beyond the horizon, alone and
abandoned as if he were the single, solitary survivor in a
devastated world, he experienced for the first time that
sentiment of being unutterably lost that the Japanese calls
sabishisa. But then he felt - as he says today - another
emotion which seemed to arise from the depths of his being
and which amazed him, a feeling of elation and enthusiasm,
for which the Japanese word is kangeki. Often distressed
almost to the point of despair by the horrifying incidents and
details that met his eye each day, by these fragments of a
man-made catastrophe, the effect upon him was equally
strong when, in the course of his daily peregrinations, he
came upon little examples of decency, of attempts to behave
properly and according to the moral code. It might seem at
first glance senseless and even comical in a gruesome sort of
way, when solitary survivors or the relatives of the dead
bowed low and with dignity before some empty piece of
ground in honour of those who had died there, or when, as
he once saw, a mourning mother searching for her daughter's
remains decided at last that one mound of ash, indistinguishable
from the ash all about, was what she was looking for, and
ceremoniously collected this, and was satisfied. But such
ceremony showed a clear intention of opposing an ethic to
utterly senseless devastation, an order to a chaos. The
originality and novelty of his new activities were also a
source of kangeki to Nagaoka, of fresh inspiration. It was as
though he felt himself, here hi the solitude of the atomic
desert, to be cast in the role of delegate for the spirit of
humanity that remembers and mourns its past while yet
preparing for, and thinking out, its future. Others might
mock him for his preoccupation with 'worthless old junk'
when he might be hunting for valuables that he could sell
and thus transform into food. Yet somebody must attempt to
transmit to posterity a comprehensible vision of Hiroshima's
sacrifice: one man at least must preserve this nadir of human
history in such a form that it could act as a warning to those
devoid of conscience or deficient in imagination.
Professor Nagaoka's house became daily more encumbered
with the objects that he collected. His wife observed with
distress that her clean and tidy rooms were being gradually
transformed into a museum filled with rubbish that stank of
burning and decay.
When, late in August, rumours that the rubble of Hiroshima was 'poisoned' grew stronger, and when the professor
himself first began to show the symptoms of the radiation
sickness (even though on 6th August he had been quite far
away from the explosion, at Kami no siki), his wife and their
eldest son insisted that the 'dangerous and infectious rubbish'
be moved out of the house at once.
There was an unusually violent difference of opinion
within the Nagaoka household, and in the heat of the
argument the professor went so far as to shout at his family:
'In the long run these things are more important and more
valuable than you are.'
But finally he gave in, and shifted his collection out into
the garden. 'I am the oppressed minority in the Nagaoka
family,' he says today, with a laugh.
If the truth were told, it was something quite different that
had persuaded the collector to take this step, a suspicion that
there was probably an element of truth in the rumours
concerning the 'poison' that lurked among the rubble. For
when, on one of the first rainy days, Professor Nagaoka
decided that he would develop the many photographs he had
taken, he found that of twenty rolls of film only four remained
intact. Radio-active rays emanating from the ash and rubble
had penetrated the other sixteen, making them completely
worthless.
Towards the end of August 1945, Kazuo M. noted in his
diary: 'Many rumours current in Hiroshima. For example,
that the bomb contained poison. Anybody who breathed any
of this in must die within one month. All grass and all
flowers will wither away.'
These rumours were almost universally believed, because
many survivors who had been only slightly wounded by the
Pikadon, or in many cases had not been hurt at all, became
invalids on or about 20th August. Some of these rapidly
developed the symptoms of what is today called 'radiation
sickness' (when the whole body has been subjected to a
massive dose of radioactivity), and died.2
Even persons who had only arrived in the city after the
disaster, in order to evacuate the wounded or to search for
relatives among the rubble, became seriously ill. Hence the
origin of the rumour that the bomb had contained a new sort
of 'poison gas'. And Dr Hachiya, the director of the Hospital
for Postal Employees, has stated that there were even people
who maintained that when the bomb fell they saw with their
own eyes a fine white mist that moved outwards just above
ground level. Another Japanese doctor, Kusano by name,
2
The Japanese radiation expert, Tsuzuki, observed in Hiroshima the
following four typical stages of the 'atom bomb sickness':
Period
Time
Syptoms
Dale
Early period
Immediately after
Acute
6-19 August
explosion and for
(approx.)
ensuing two
weeks
Middle period
Third to ninth
Subacute
Approx. 20
week
Complications
Aug.-lOSept.
Late period
Third and fourth
Recuperation
Early Oct.-earry
month
(often only
Dec.
temporary)
Subsequent
Fifth month and
Damage to
After 5 Dec.
period
later
organism
1945
later attempted to account for this phenomenon. He wrote
that below and close to the epicentre, immediately after the
explosion, a fantastic quantity of radio-active dust was stirred
up which, in combination with the ionized air, did in fact
produce an effect similar to that of poison gas. The scientists
Shohno and Sakuma have pointed out that many persons
engaged in rescue work must have breathed in such radiationinfected dust. The result was cases of suffocation, diarrhoea,
vomiting and bleeding. Thousands of people lost their hair
and even their eyebrows.
As early as the third day after the disaster a systematic
study of the new sickness was begun by certain Japanese. Dr
Chuta Tamagawa was a pathologist, a professor at Okayama
University who also had a professional chair in the medical
faculty of Hiroshima University, which at the time in question
had moved to Kotachi. As soon as he saw the first cases of
this sickness, he realized that he was confronted with symptoms that had nothing in common with those of the diseases
described in the medical textbooks. Post-mortem examination of
persons who had died after the explosion made him more than
ever convinced that this was so. Therefore as soon as he had
returned to the ruined city, on 9th August, he went to see his
old school friend, now head of the Health Department, and
asked permission to dissect a few of the victims. It is true
that at this period thousands of unburied corpses still lay
among the smoking ruins; yet even relatives required a
special permit before such a corpse might be cremated. Any
man who did not rely on his own initiative, but instead
attempted to acquire such a permit through the 'normal
channels', soon found himself lost in a labyrinth of bureaucratic formality. For the few available officials who had
themselves survived the disaster insisted upon the normal
production of papers and proofs of identity: in the circumstances that prevailed at this time, most people were naturally
quite unable to produce these documents.
So it is not hard to imagine how difficult it must have then
been to acquire permission for the autopsy of unidentified
corpses. Professor Tamagawa, a particularly highly-strung
and short-tempered man, soon gave up the struggle and left
this frustrating city where he could achieve nothing. His
colleague, Dr Seishi Ohashi, was luckier. Together with the
famous Japanese nuclear physicist, Yoshio Nishina, he had
been flown to Hiroshima from Tokyo as early as 8th August
on the orders of the War Ministry. On 21st August he
submitted to his military superiors the very first medical
report (based on autopsies carried out on twelve atomic
victims) dealing with the 'radiation sickness'. In this he laid
particular stress on the damage to the bone marrow and to
the lymphatic glands caused by gamma and beta rays.
But despite the fact that 'Tenno' had already announced,
days before, Japan's readiness to surrender and thus had
officially declared that the war was lost, the military authorities
continued to treat Dr Ohashi's highly important report as
'top secret'. The result of this was that the doctors in
Hiroshima, struggling as best they could to save the lives of
thousands of sick people, were compelled to rely on guesswork. Since the real nature of the radiation symptoms was
unknown to them - for neither friend nor foe saw fit to
instruct them concerning the biological secondary effects of
the 'new bomb' - they gave their patients treatment that was
quite incorrect.
Professor Imahori, an historian at Hiroshima University,
sums up the situation as it then existed in the following
words: 'It must unfortunately be admitted that one error
after another was made in the diagnosis of the atom bomb
sickness. The fact was that, from approximately 10th August
on, thousands of patients were suffering from fever and the
passage of blood. They were all classified as dysentery cases.
The Hospital for Postal Employees set up isolation wards, in
order to prevent the spread of the infection, but the number of
"dysentery" cases continued to grow. The basements of the
Fukuya warehouse in the centre of Hiroshima were
temporarily requisitioned and designated an "Infirmary for
Infectious Diseases". Each day hundreds of persons,
described as dysentery cases, were transferred to this infirmary,
whether they wished so or not . . . and they were isolated.
By the end of August it was established that those patients
were in no case infected with dysentery bacilli ... From then
on, the medical treatment was altered, but by this time it was
already too late for a very large number of them.
They had died because, as the result of a false diagnosis,
they had been moved from their first sickbeds and, in
disgusting conditions, had been locked up in this infirmary >
Meanwhile, Professor Tamagawa, originally routed by the
bureaucrats, learned of a new outbreak of the strange illness
on or about 20th August. He decided to return to Hiroshima.
But this time he was determined that no obstructionism on
the part of the officials would prevent him from getting to
the root of the problem. Late on the night of 27th August he
awoke his old friend and colleague (they had been students
together) and told the sleepy Dr Hachiya in loud terms that
brooked of no denial that he planned to carry out postmortems, and that he proposed to do just that, whether or
not the 'idiots in the local administration' gave him
permission. In the course of the last few days Hachiya had
formed a theory of the 'new sickness', which, however, was
in some respects self-contradictory. He was therefore
delighted that such assistance would be forthcoming.
'For God's sake, though, speak more softly,' he interjected. 'I
thank heaven that you have come back here. There is
nobody I'd be more pleased to have here at this time than
yourself.'
A decisive though purely passive role in the gradual illumination of the obscurity surrounding the 'new sickness’ was
played by Midori Naka}] one of the most beautiful and
distinguished actresses in all Japan, famous above all for her
unique performances as La Dame aux Camelias. She was the
leading lady of the well-known Sakura tai (Cherry blossom
Company), which had been having a season in Hiroshima
since the beginning of June 1945. Unfortunately, the members of the company had been living in a house that was
located some seven hundred yards from the explosion centre.
Thirteen of them, out of a total of seventeen, were killed
there on 6th August. Four remained alive, briefly. Among
these was Miss Naka.
'When it happened I was in the kitchen, since it was my
turn to make breakfast for the company that morning.' Thus
did she later describe what she had seen. 'I was wearing a
light housecoat, coloured red and white, and had a scarf
about my head. When a sudden white light filled the room,
my first reaction was that the hot water boiler must have
exploded. I immediately lost consciousness. When I came to, I
was in darkness, and I gradually became aware that I was
pinned beneath the ruins of the house. When I tried to work
my way free, I realized that apart from my small panties I was
entirely naked. I ran my hands over my face and back: I was
uninjured! Only my hands and legs were slightly scratched. I
ran just as I was to the river, where everything was in flames. I
jumped into the water and floated downstream. After a few
hundred yards some soldiers fished me out.'
Up to this point the actress's story differs only in detail
from that of countless others. Its significance lies in the fact
that Midori Naka, though she felt very ill, was determined to
get back to Tokyo just as soon as possible. Since she was a
'public figure', a seat was found for her in one of the rare
trains that were then travelling to the capital; and, again
because she was so famous, the very best doctors saw her at
once. As it happened, one such doctor was Masao Tsuzuki,
perhaps the greatest radiation expert in Japan. Handling the
case of the beautiful Midori, he was thus enabled to study
for the first time the 'new sickness' from Hiroshima. Of all
the Japanese doctors, he was the only one for whom this
sickness was not, in fact, quite so 'new'. For, almost twenty
years before, he had carried out research on the effect that
'hard Roentgen rays' produced in rabbits: and he had then
observed in his laboratory animals almost all the symptoms
that the Hiroshima doctors were now encountering among
the many survivors of the atomic explosion.3
3
At the annual meeting of the American Roentgen Society in May 1926
Tsuzuki gave an address, which caused a considerable stir, on the subject. It
was later published in the American }aumal of Roenlgenology and Radium
Therapy, with the title: 'Experimental Studies on the Biological Action of
Hard Roentgen Rays'.
A report on the last days of the actress Midori Naka runs
as follows:
'On 16th August she entered the hospital of Tokyo University.
Almost nothing remained of that facial beauty and elegance of
deportment which had made her famous. In the days that followed,
her black hair began to fall out, and her white corpuscle count sank to
between 300 and 400 (normal count: 8,000 approx.). In the
hospital everything possible was done to save this marvellous woman.
She was given one blood transfusion after another. At the beginning
her temperature was 37.8 centigrade and her pulse eighty. But by
21st August her temperature had risen to forty-one, and on 23rd
August purple patches, each as big as a pigeon's egg, appeared
upon her body, to the number of twelve or thirteen. On the
following day her pulse had risen to 158. Midori maintained that
she felt better that morning, but a few hours later she was dead.
Only a few tiny hairs still adhered to her skull. When she was lifted
off the bed, even these fell out, and floated slowly to the ground
It is probable that many of the sick in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki who managed to survive owed this to the fact that
Midori Naka was not an unknown person and therefore did
not spend her last and agonizing days as an anonymous
woman in some overcrowded isolation ward at Hiroshima,
but rather was under the constant supervision of the radiation
expert, Masao Tsuzuki, and of the blood specialist whom he
had selected to handle her case, Jui Miyake. For the course
that the sickness took, and the subsequent autopsy of the
actress's body, now crumpled and light as a feather, enabled
Tsuzuki, who had hitherto had only second- or third-hand
reports of the sufferings of the survivors in the two atombombed cities, to establish beyond doubt the true nature of
the sickness. He immediately used all his influence to ensure
that the real diagnosis and the most promising method of
treating the radiation sickness be made known with all speed to
the doctors in the two cities devastated by the Pikadon. Tsuzukis
first action was to visit those military authorities
who had carefully locked away Dr Ohashi's report in their
steel safes. The infuriated doctor made it quite plain to the
soldiers that this was not at all the sort of report that should
be treated as a military secret. On the contrary, it was
essential that everything be done so that he and his colleagues
could travel to Hiroshima and there tell the truth about the
sickness. As a former admiral in the Imperial Navy he was
listened to with the respect due to his rank.
On 29th August Tsuzuki and the group he was taking
with him boarded an overcrowded train which deposited
them on the following morning in Hiroshima. A few biologists
who belonged to this team had shown a certain reluctance to
undertake this journey, for they were more aware than were
their companions of the danger that the radiation-infected
ruins of Hiroshima could still constitute to human life.
Nevertheless, they had finally overcome their personal fears
and, fully conscious of the risks they were running, had gone
along with the others.
On 3rd September 1945, at 2 P.M., on the first floor of a
ruined bank, Dr Tsuzuki gave his first address to his medical
colleagues practising in Hiroshima. His subject was the
'radiation sickness.'
Dr Hachiya, who had attended this meeting, has stated: 'I
was surprised to find such a small audience in the lecture
room. Some, it is true, had been prevented from coming by
the rain, but the real explanation was that there were so few
doctors in Hiroshima that their number was not enough even to
half-fill the room .. .'4
'After a few introductory remarks, Professor Tsuzuki
mounted the lecture stand. The fire-blackened walls of the
room provided an apposite background for his talk on the
atom bomb. He began by giving his theory concerning the
development of the bomb, and then went on to discuss its
powers of annihilation and the nature of the injuries it
could inflict. He devoted particular attention to its explosive
potential, to wounds caused by the extreme heat it generated,
and to the internal effects that could be attributed to its rays.
4
Of the 190 Hiroshima doctors, 72 were reported missing or killed after die
bomb had fallen.
Finally he spoke of the danger that these rays implied for the
human body. After Dr Tsuzuki had finished his speech, Dr
Miyake took the floor and made a report concerning the
results achieved in autopsies carried out on patients who
had died of the radiation sickness.5 What he had to say
corresponded almost exactly with what we had observed in
our daily practice. For a while I was irritated by the thought
that he should be the first to make these observations
publicly. But when he described the difficulty he had had in
coming to the correct conclusions, I felt that this was a
friendly bond between us and him, for he had had to
overcome the same difficulties that had faced us.'
In his Diary, which has subsequently become famous, Dr
Hachiya does not, however, report that part of the two
speeches which was perhaps of the greatest practical importance, namely advice as to how to treat the radiation sickness.
Dr Miyake announced that the patients needed an unusual
degree and amount of physical rest as well as a diet rich in
protein, vitamins, salt and calcium. He made one statement
which, objectively quite correct, nevertheless struck his
listeners as exceptionally and shockingly callous: namely that
there was no purpose in attempting to cure patients whose
corpuscle count had sunk beneath a certain figure, since they
must die in any event. The doctors were advised to concentrate on those cases that might yet be saved.
Dr Tsuzuki laid stress on the importance of stimulating
the blood-building organs and emphasized the importance of
heavy dosing with vitamin C. Remarkably enough, he also
recommended the burning of aromatic incense sticks. In
order to explain to the doctors the effect that ionizing rays
produce upon the internal organs, he compared this with the
effect of the so-called poison gases. This analogy, factually
inadequate and intended indeed only as a vulgar comparison,
was later held against the doctor by the Occupation Authorities
and contributed in no small measure to his subsequent
'dismissal' in 1947.
5
As soon as he arrived in Hiroshima Dr Miyake performed a number of
post-mortem examinations. From 30th August to 6th September he went
almost entirely without sleep and during this period he dissected twenty-six
corpses.
Accompanying the doctors through the ruins of Hiroshima
was a reporter named Katashima who worked for the
Japanese news agency Domei. He had lost his parents in the
Pikadon, and since he had found neither the time nor a place
in which properly to inter the pitiful remnants of his mother
and father that he had collected among the ashes, he carried
these with him everywhere.
'When he hurried through the town collecting material for
his newspaper reports, the bones rattled in a metal box upon
his hip,' a witness has stated. This reporter now wished
to cable the contents of Tsuzuki's and Miyake's lectures
immediately to the Domei representative in Lisbon. For
though Japan had surrendered, radio links between the
Japanese press and their offices in neutral countries were still
functioning. As Katashima did not feel that he was competent to
draft such a report alone and without the assistance of a
medical expert who possessed the requisite special knowledge, he turned to Professor Tamagawa for help. The
professor, however, had reservations concerning the absolute
correctness of what his colleagues had said, and thus the
report remained unwritten.
'In retrospect this seems particularly regrettable,' is the
opinion of the historian Imahori. 'For only a few days later
further activity on the part of the Domei News Agency was
forbidden by Allied Headquarters, and in October the Agency
was dissolved. From then on, the voice of Japan - and with it
the results of research into the effects of the atomic bomb was silenced, so that for five years no word of all this
reached the outside world. Had this report appeared in early
September 1945 ... the whole world would have known,
with horror, what hitherto unexpected consequences the
atomic bomb had brought in its train ... Perhaps the further
manufacture of such weapons would have been forbidden
even then ... In any event an important chance was missed
of influencing the global situation in a decisive manner.'
The M. family also began to show the painful symptoms that
revealed the radiation sickness. Setsuo M. complained that
his eyesight had suddenly deteriorated, his wife began to lose
her hair, while little Hideko vomited several times a day.
Kazuo sat for hours each day in front of the entrance that led
down to the air-raid shelter and stared out over the vast field of
rubble. Later he attempted to recapture his mood as it had
been, in a poem that he sent me:
It rains and rains,
In the slanting rain I sit,
It drums upon my naked skull,
It drips across my singed eyebrows,
It runs into that bleeding hole, my mouth.
Rain on my wounded shoulders, Rain
in my lacerated heart. Rain, rain, rain,
Wherefore do I live on?
Doctors practising in Hiroshima at that time have recorded
that a second phase now set in, after the first period of
desperate and confused activity that followed immediately
upon the Pikadon; many survivors now gave an impression of
utter apathy and showed no wish to go on living. This
symptom they called Muyoku-ganbo, and when they noted in a
very sick patient's face an expression of listlessness increasing
with each passing day, then they knew that there was no
longer any hope of saving this particular life.
An eye-witness, the poetess Yoko Ohta, has described this
condition: 'Each of us had for a time done everything
possible, without knowing for sure what exactly it was that
we were doing. Then we awoke, and now we wished to
speak no more. Even the sheepdogs that roamed about
ceased to bark. The trees, the plants all that lived seemed
numb, without movement or colour. Hiroshima did not
somehow resemble a city destroyed by war, but rather a
fragment of a world that was ending. Mankind had destroyed
itself, and the survivors now felt as though they were suicides
who had failed. Thus the "expression of wanting nothing
more" came to be seen upon our faces.'
A stubborn rumour continued to circulate: owing to the
presence of 'poison gas' the soil on which Hiroshima had
stood would remain uninhabitable for one or two generations. It
was said that neither fauna nor flora could live here in the
immediate future. True, since the Pikadon countless wild
flowers had bloomed with a luxuriance never known before,
while grasses and weeds were springing up everywhere, but
this unbridled outburst of fertility was regarded by the
populace as merely the last and final expression of the will to
live, as a sort of euphoria on the part of nature. When
early in September American newspapermen first arrived in
Hiroshima, they were asked over and over again whether this
'poison gas' story was true. Unfortunately, since they lacked
the technical knowledge, they were unable to deny it categorically, and thus the rumour gained renewed currency.
One of the few people who refused to believe that Hiroshima's soil had been 'poisoned* for at least seventy-five
years was Kazuo's father, Setsuo M.
This proud and wiry little man had long suffered from the
fact that the army had categorized him as medically unfit
because he was so small and so short-sighted. Now he saw
his chance of showing his fellow-citizens what sort of a man
he really was, one of the few who would never accept defeat.
To all who would listen, and to those who wouldn't as well,
Setsuo M. announced in a loud voice: 'Even if all the world
maintains that our town has become uninhabitable, my family
and I intend to see it out here.' Or, in more flowery language:
'We shall put fear to flight, and transform the City of Death
into a City of Life.’
The reserved Kazuo had little time for such flamboyant
turns of phrase, yet he could not help feeling a certain
admiration for his stubborn father. Now for the first time
he understood what the neighbours had meant when they
described M. senior as 'a fanatical fool'. Did this description
not carry with it the implication that they themselves lacked
his complete readiness for self-sacrifice and total commitment, and that they were aware of this?
Certainly Setsuo M. had never tried to 'fix' matters to his
own advantage. When he had to close up his little business,
because one of the countless war economy decrees declared
that the sale and repair of gramophones was a 'luxury*
enterprise and as such no longer permitted, he had not only
accepted this order, which spelled the ruin of his professional
existence, without the slightest murmur, but even appeared to
be delighted by the news. For thenceforth this passionate
patriot was able to devote his entire time and energy to an
activity which had at least a distant resemblance to soldiering: he
was an air-raid warden.
And he carried out his duties as such so enthusiastically
that he had no time for anything else. As a result, the family
M., after having exhausted their slender savings, sank into
the most dire poverty. 'Father often quite forgot to provide
any housekeeping money at all. Then Mother had to remind
him, with tears in her eyes, that he had certain responsibilities
towards his family which he ought also to fulfil.' Thus speaks
Kazuo.
But, as is well known, Hiroshima, that sector of the
'internal front' where the keen and enthusiastic air-raid
warden Setsuo M. stood guard, was for a long time spared
the impact of war. While the United States Air Force was
reducing one Japanese town after another to cinders and
ashes, Hiroshima, for reasons that then seemed incomprehensible, remained untouched. The inhabitants hoped that
the many emigrants from their city who now lived in Hawaii
and the USA had somehow arranged that the city of their
origin should be spared.
The first time that Setsuo M. saw 'action' on a large scale
was less than two weeks before the atomic attack. For on 25
July, in view of experience gained from the holocausts when
other cities had been plastered with napalm, it was decided to
cut broad fire-breaks across the middle of Hiroshima,
which involved the demolition of many hundreds of houses.
Warden M. was ordered to clear, in the most thorough
fashion, the area about the Army Supply Depot. One of the
hundred-odd houses that fell victim to this order was his
own - a fact, however, that seemed to fill Kazuo's father with
delight rather than distress, since this enabled him at last to
make a visible sacrifice in his country's cause.
The family M. had thenceforth found lodgings in the
house of another air-raid warden, a change, as Kazuo recalls,
that filled his mother with anxious forebodings. There is a
Japanese proverb which says: 'When three houses stand
together, live not in the middle.' Yet what happened subsequently quite disproved this saying. The two neighbouring
houses were smashed by the atom bomb into wooden splinters, while the one in the centre was to a certain extent
sheltered by the other two and was only crushed and twisted
'like a sweet pretzel (tankin’ No member of the family M.
was buried beneath the rubble. The worst they suffered were
minor abrasions.
According to Japanese popular wisdom there are three
conditions that man must fear above all else: the anger of the
earth (earthquakes), the anger of the sky (thunder and
lightning), and a father's anger. Setsuo M. was such a father,
feared by his son Kazuo. Indeed he was if anything even
more strict than was customary, owing to the fact that his son
had been born on the llth of February, which date is the
most solemn festival of Imperial Japan. Two thousand five
hundred and ninety years before Kazuo's birth the Emperor
Jimmu had founded Japan, or so the history books said. The
fact that the alleged birthday of his country and the actual
birthday of his son fell on the same date filled Setsuo M.
(who secretly regarded himself as a failure) with pride and
high hopes. His sole male heir was expected to live up to the
one and fulfil the other.
'High time you stopped mourning! Don't give in like
this! Come on, help me build our new home!' With such
exhortations, constantly repeated, Setsuo succeeded at last in
making his son shake off the apathy and the longing for
death that had weighed him down ever since the surrender.
Reluctantly at first, but later with a sort of enthusiastic frenzy,
Kazuo had obeyed his father's orders.
'They're mad!' passers-by would remark, as they observed
father and son busily clearing their building site, while
carefully laying aside charred beams that might yet be useful.
They said the same when they saw the first, strong, wooden
supports being driven into the ground. They were still saying it
when Kazuo and his father were working on the roof of
their new home. A note of triumph is detectable when Kazuo
M. writes: 'As early as the thirty-second day our building
stood, created from the materials that we had found on the
charred ground. This was Hiroshima's "New Building No.
1".'
When the family first lay down to sleep under their new
roof, Hideko whispered to her brother: 'Look, Ntisan (elder
brother), the stars are twinkling through the cracks in the
roof.'
And Kazuo replied sarcastically: 'You've got the Americans to
thank for your heavenly new house.'
8
When on the third day after the bombardment Dr Michihiko
Hachiya looked through the holes in the wall that had once
been the windows of his hospital, a sight met his eyes which
he has described in the following words:
'Looking east, south, and west, was an unobstructed view
of Hiroshima and in Hiroshima Bay we could see the island
Ninoshima. Near the centre of the city, some fifteen hundred
metres distant, one could see the blackened ruins of the two
largest buildings in Hiroshima, the Fukuya Department Store
and the Chugoku Press Building. Hijiyama, the sacred and
beautiful little mountain in the eastern sector of the city,
looked almost close enough to touch. To our north no
buildings remained. For the first time, I could understand
what my friends had meant when they said Hiroshima was
destroyed.'
Any person who today should glance through the files of
the principal local newspaper, the Chugoku Skimbun, must
note with amazement the speed with which life began to
pulsate again through those parts of the devastated city that
surrounded the actual 'atomic desert'. Contrary to all the
dictates of common sense, tens of thousands clung to the
rubble-strewn patches of soil where once their homes had
stood. Each day more and more people who had fled returned to
the city; their number exceeded those who now moved
away. The local newspaper itself provided the best example
of this unqualified will that life must go on, a will that, to
begin with, resided only in a handful of individuals. Already
on 9 August, that is to say three days after the catastrophe,
the newspaper was again being delivered to its subscribers,
wherever and whenever these could be found. It is true that
this paper was in fact either the Asahi or the Mainicki,
printed in neighbouring cities and brought to Hiroshima for
distribution there: however, as a gesture of solidarity with,
and help for, the stricken cities, these special editions were
called (and bore the city emblem of) the Chugoku Shimbun.
Meanwhile, those members of that newspaper's staff who
survived were struggling indefatigably in the shell of their
almost totally burned-out building to bring out their own
paper as soon as possible. Their first attempt to produce an
emergency edition, using the presses of the small printing
firm Sagawa, came to nothing owing to the intervention of
the Provincial Chief of Staff, Major-General Matsumara,
who assumed the role of local censor. Four members of the
Chtigoku Shitnbun editorial staff therefore became for a while
town-criers. Equipped with megaphones, they shouted the
more important local news and announcements from the
back of lorries.
Fortunately a gigantic rotary press had been carefully
stored for safety in the little village of Nukushina, some three
miles from Hiroshima. But neither the walls nor the windows
of the old factory building in which it lay had withstood the
distant blast effect of the Pikadon. The press was protected
by three large army tents, with its most delicate elements
wrapped in sacking. A major operation was now undertaken
by the printers, electricians, mechanics, clerks and editorial
staff with the help of a number of casual labourers: first
a printing house of a temporary nature was built; then
electric current was provided over specially laid lines on
rapidly constructed poles; when after many a fruitless
attempt the cylinders of the press one evening gave their
customary rumble and began slowly to tremble and to
turn, the entire
staff raised a glass of illegally brewed spirits ('Sun') and
there and then, in the moonlight, drank a toast to the future
of Hiroshima.
As early as 31 August, less than three weeks after the
Pikadon, the first locally produced and locally printed postwar
edition of the Chugoku Shimbun was on sale in the streets
of Hiroshima. Thenceforth it appeared regularly, with
advertisements and even, as in the old days, illustrations.
'Our darkroom was an air-raid shelter dug into the hillside,'
one of the editors remembers, from the heroic days in
Nukushina: 'but our type had to be cast in the open air,
under the sunny sky. The final results of these two operations
were remarkably similar: pictures and texts were scarcely to
be told apart, for the whole page emerged from the press
more or less black on black. On rainy days we had to go
without our pictures. Before being used, the rolls of newsprint
were beaten with wet bamboo sticks, and then dried over
charcoal fires ...'
On 4 September 1945 the Chugoku Shimbun announced
that the distribution of free, emergency rations was ending
and that twenty-four temporary Food Offices were being set
up.
On 7 September the newspaper reported for the first time
the population figure for the municipal area of the city. It
then stood at 130,000 compared with 390,000, inclusive of
soldiers in garrison and evacuees, who had lived there before
the catastrophe. Three days later the partial reintroduction of
the electricity service was announced, and on 13 September it
was stated that the city administration would provide building
materials gratis to all whose houses had been totally demolished. And indeed the little municipal forest called
Koganeyama was felled with all speed, the tree-trunks sawn
up, and the planks distributed to all who asked for them - a
vitally important and courageous measure, but one for
which in years to come no official would accept the
responsibility, for certain local politicians were later to
complain that the wood had been distributed without 'any
properly constituted authority' and therefore 'illegally'.
A powerful spur was given to this first phase of the
rebuilding by the impending autumnal equinox, which usually
sets in at the beginning of September in those regions with
much rain and fierce storms. Sometimes this period of bad
weather breaks even earlier, in the midst of summer. But
August 1945 was a comparatively dry month, and the
occasional gentle showers that fell were greeted by the people
camping among the ruins as a relief, for they banished, at
least for the time being, the great clouds of gnats and flies
that settled alike on the living and on the corpses still rotting
amidst the rubble and splinters.
In any event new and rapidly constructed huts began to
arise, almost always at a respectful distance from the devastated city centre. While at the end of the year the population
inhabiting the 'Circle of Hell' amounted to only 3.1 per cent
of those who had lived there before, all the outlying districts
were completely overcrowded. Up to two miles from the
centre of the explosion the human density was 128.5 per
cent of what it had been in the 'pre-atomic age'; beyond that
distance the figure rose to 181.6 per cent, that is to say
almost twice as many people were living in the suburbs as
before.
In some of these outlying districts there had long lived
thousands of persons regarded by their fellow-citizens as
'unclean' for some reason or other, and therefore cut off
from the rest of the population and banished to special areas.
Hiroshima had an unusually large number of these ghettoes,
known as buraku, because for hundreds of years this had
been one of the high places of Buddhism: in this religious
atmosphere, a great deal of the daily work was carried out by
these unclean people called Eta (literally 'filth'), since devout
believers, following the letter of their law, refused to soil
their hands by engaging in such tasks as the slaughter of
beasts, the tanning of leather or the removal and disposal of
refuse. The horror inspired by these unfortunate 'unclean'
persons was such that it was regarded as a defilement even to
utter their name. Instead the four fingers of one hand were
held erect, a gesture that identified the Eta with four-legged
creatures, thus reducing them to the status of animals.
It was a sort of compensating justice that these outcasts,
huddled in their buraktts, should have suffered less than the
other inhabitants of Hiroshima from the Pikadon, simply
owing to the fact that they had been banished as far as
possible from the city centre. Overnight they had become a
privileged class, for they at least still had a roof over their
heads.
For the first time in centuries the walls of religiously
inspired caste distinction trembled. In the nineteenth century
the State had passed laws giving the Eta complete civic
equality; what had remained a dead letter now suddenly
became the reality. Fugitives from Hiroshima found refuge
in the Eta ghettoes of Minami, Misasa and Fukushima in the
northern, central and southern quarters. Meanwhile for the
first tune certain enterprising inhabitants of the burakus dared
to venture into the devastated and temporarily deserted city
centre, with the intention of making a living there.
Yet in exact proportion to the rise of Hiroshima from the
ashes and the chaos that had prevailed during those first
weeks, and to the re-creation of a settled order of life, so the
old walls of prejudice and contempt rose again about the Eta.
For a moment it had seemed as though this frightful new
weapon had left one good legacy behind, in the emancipation
of the Eta. It had, it is true, caused the dividing wall to
tremble, but it had not succeeded in knocking it down. Not
even an atom bomb was strong enough for this.
9
With the onset of the colder weather, which began early in
September, the local authorities of Hiroshima found
themselves confronted with an urgent problem: how were they
to clothe over one hundred thousand people who, with a few
exceptions, had literally saved only their naked lives? During
the hot weather they had got by with only a few rags and bare
feet, but now to all the other problems there were added
illnesses due to the cold. Many people were so weakened that
a single chill was enough to carry them off in a few days.
A rumour circulated among the populace that, since Hiroshima had been a garrison town and also, during the war, the
main port of embarkation for all troop transports bound for
the South-East Asian fronts, there were huge stocks of
military supplies of every sort hidden in the surrounding
countryside. Enterprising persons had already discovered one or
two small supply dumps. Many a man who had got a good tip
from a supply officer, and who was able to organize the
necessary transport with which to move the stock, laid at that
time the foundation of a substantial postwar fortune. Thus
for example what is now Hiroshima's leading shoe shop
acquired its original stock (and with it a sort of monopoly
that lasted for several months) from just such a treasure
trove.
The task of taking over such stocks and depots as had not
yet been looted, and ensuring their proper distribution among
the populace, fell to Shinzo Hamai, a municipal official who
had proved his abilities in the critical days that followed the
dropping of the bomb. Catastrophes, like wars and revolutions, will suddenly thrust hitherto unknown men into high
office and make them the leaders of their threatened society.
Thus this open-faced, clean-shaven, broad-shouldered man
in his thirties, of whom scarcely anyone outside official circles
had heard before 6 August, became overnight the most
important man in Hiroshima; this was due not only to the
power inherent in his office, but also to his great energy and
high ability.
The representatives of the regional authority and of the
General Staff had either been killed or had fled in panic to
the Tamonin Temple on the outskirts of the city, where they
sat debating how best to overcome the unprecedented horror
and chaos. Not so Hamai. Leaving them to their despair, he
fought his way back into the city, which was still in flames,
and reached the seat of government, in the Town Hall,
where he installed himself in the only two remaining rooms
that were not completely in ruins. From there for days on
end he, and he alone, 'ruled' the city. On Hamai's initiative,
emergency cookhouses were established overnight in the
surrounding villages. Then he had set about at once arranging
for new sources of supply. He was lucky. In the harbour he
discovered a tanker entirely filled with vegetable oil: he found a
gigantic refrigeration warehouse filled with edibles that
were in danger of going bad as a result of the electricity
breakdown, and after overcoming stubborn resistance on the
part of the bureaucrats he 'liberated' its contents. He dashed
hither and thither, an improvised and improvising fieldmarshal in the fight against hunger and thirst.
His keenest helpers were the officer cadets attending a
tank school in the port area called Ujina. When first Hamai
had asked them to help in the distribution of foodstuffs, their
immediate answer had been that that was no concern of
theirs. They were attending this school solely in order to
learn the tactics of motorized warfare. The supply chief,
however, refused to be fobbed off with this, and simply
requisitioned the school and all its transport. The frustrated
armoured corps heroes ended by taking to their new work
with such enthusiasm that their joy at their supply 'victory'
even seemed to have banished the sadness of the defeat
itself. Their cry, 'Don't worry, we'll soon be back with more,'
brought immeasurable relief to the dying and the sick during
those first chaotic days that followed the catastrophe, and
sounded like a clarion call of encouragement in the ears of
the others.
With his customary optimism Hamai now tackled his new
task of clothing the 130,000 survivors of Hiroshima. He had
no trouble in persuading the military authorities that they
divulge to him where the hidden supply depots were located.
But they also made plain to him, and at once, that this did
not mean his difficulties were over.
'We've got underclothes, socks, boots, uniforms and all
the rest needed to clothe a soldier completely, enough indeed
for a hundred thousand men, at no great distance from Saijo,'
they told him. 'We should be delighted if you requisitioned it
at once, since otherwise the Army of Occupation will only
seize it as legitimate spoils of war. Just go and take it. Only
how you plan to transport all that stuff into the city is another
problem, your problem.'
In view of the extreme shortage of petrol, there could be
no question of transporting such vast stocks to Hiroshima by
road. So Hamai turned to the local railway administration.
There they shook their heads: 'You'll need at least thirty
goods trucks. We can't supply you with half that number.'
In the old days Hamai had avoided arguments. In the
period after the disaster he had discovered that he possessed
an unknown talent, the ability to convince others. By skilful
argument or stubborn and deliberate silence he had hitherto
always achieved his ends. And now, once again, he succeeded
slowly in bringing the men responsible for the Saijo Railway
round to his way of thinking. 'Right!' they said at last.
'Somehow or other we'll see to it that you get the trucks you
need.'
They may have assumed that he would find it impossible to
transport this huge mountain of clothing from the depot to the
railway station within the time foreseen. For the dump
where the clothing and much else as well were stored was a
long way from the station, many miles inland, in the mountains, near a little village by the name of Kawakami.
'If I were you, I'd just give up,' said Lieutenant F., under
whose administration that essential depot lay. He too was
trying to frighten away the man from Hiroshima with his
tiresome requests for help. 'How do you imagine you're
going to set about it, young man? It took six hundred strong
soldiers all of six months to transport that stuff up here. And
you want to get it all moved down again in the brief period
before the cold weather begins. It's unthinkable.' When
Hamai showed absolutely no sign of being discouraged or
indeed in any way moved by this argument, the officer lost
his temper: 'Just in case it hasn't been drawn to your
attention, I think I should tell you that we happen to have
lost the war! What you are proposing to do is neither more
nor less than a pure waste of extremely valuable manpower.'
Then he turned sharply on his heel and with his back to
his visitor proceeded to gaze out of the window. For him the
conversation was over.
Hamai said not a word. He quoted the old proverb to
himself: 'He who talks to one who is silent is soon stripped
naked ...' and awaited the next outburst. With him waited
the tens of thousands urgently in need of the clothes that
would enable them to survive the coming winter.
The officer's next action was truly unexpected. With a stiff
and awkward gesture he drew his revolver and released the
safely catch. Hamai instinctively took a step backwards and
quickly wondered where in this room he could take cover.
But Lieutenant F. did not even turn towards him. Instead he
began to fire his revolver wildly out of the window.
This conversation was taking place in the Administration
Building of Saijo Agricultural College, most of which had
been requisitioned by the army. Beneath the office in which
the two men stood lay the open-air gymnasium. And when
Hamai attempted to see what it was the excited soldier was
firing at, he saw between the parallel bars and other gymnastic
equipment huge piles of coats, trousers, greatcoats. It was
into these that the lieutenant went on firing until he was out
of ammunition.
Only then did he turn towards his visitor once again. His
long, mongoloid face now bore an expression of despair
rather than of anger: 'Don't you understand? I can't simply
hand all this stuff over to you. Is it not possible that one of
these days we might start to fight again? And you expect me to
give up all this equipment without a word? Why, even the girls
who work in the offices here have sworn that they want to
continue the struggle to the bitter end.'
He was completely spent now. Unsure of himself, his
mind apparently a blank, he stood there playing with his
pistol. And when next he spoke, it was in a broken voice. He
was close to tears. Even his last gesture of defiance at the
defeat had come to nothing.
'We have done without so much, willingly, eagerly,' he
murmured reluctantly. 'For years and years and years. And
now we are told it was all in vain!' At last he tried to pull
himself together. 'All right. At least something will have been
achieved if we can help the people of Hiroshima. Maybe in
years to come we shall once again need every Japanese. It
will be a tremendous job, lugging all this stuff down to the
railway. But you can rely on me, I shan't put any more
obstacles in your way.'
Hamai very quickly found helpers for the transportation.
Forestry students from Saijo soon moved the 'Treasure of
Kawakami' down to the railway line, using for this purpose
handcarts, peasants' wagons, bicycles and even prams. So at
least half the shirts, furs, caps, sandals, jackboots, coats and
blankets reached the freezing inhabitants of Hiroshima just
before the bad weather set in. Meanwhile Hamai had found
and 'liberated' - this time with no trouble - another supply
dump; this one belonged to the navy, and its contents had
been destined for the war in the South-West Pacific. He
distributed them.
That is why strangers who visited Hiroshima at this time
reported that the entire population was playing at soldiers.
For not only the men but also the girls, the old people, the
pregnant women, the children and even the tiny tots were all
wearing brand new, often fantastically tailored but nevertheless
practical and recognizable uniforms. Thus did the tragedy of
Japanese militarism end inadvertently on this note of travesty,
of fancy dress. Even cripples and those whose faces bore the
sign of forthcoming atomic death were part of the
masquerade.
Almost everywhere else in Japan anybody who had ever
worn a uniform was busy getting rid of this compromising
clothing, for fear lest he be imprisoned by the expected
foreign Occupation Forces or be made to stand trial for
crimes of violence committed against the enemy or the
civilian population in formerly Japanese-occupied territories.
But in Hiroshima the atom-bombed civilian had no fear of
wearing the compromising khaki that yesterday had struck
terror into the hearts of all Asians and was now a source of
terror to its Japanese wearers themselves. It almost seemed as
though the survivors of the Pikadon felt that by passing
through its searing fire they had become purged of all guilt.
Particularly valuable were the high jackboots, themselves
the quintessential symbol of an age that was over. For the
autumnal rains had set in at full flood. The pathways between
the huts and across the expanse of ruins were pitted with
holes, and the ash everywhere was quickly transformed into
blackish slime.
AFTER THE DELUGE
1
The literal translation of Hiroshima is broad (kiro) island
(shtma). The centre of the city has always lain upon an island
encircled by die two principal arms of the seven-mouthed
River Ohta. The other city districts gradually came into
existence upon land reclaimed from the river and the sea.
Being so low-lying, these delta lands have always been liable to
flooding when the river overflows its banks. Almost every
other year the waters roaring down from the mountains after
the rainy season would break the dykes and in the bad years
this would coincide with mountainous seas, whipped by
typhoons, pouring into the areas that lay below sea level.
The worst of these catastrophic floods had occurred on 6
August 1653. Even before the fateful year 1945, 6 August
had therefore always been a date that evoked tragedy and
misfortune for the citizens of Hiroshima. On that day in the
seventeenth century hundreds of houses and all the bridges
had been washed away. Records showed that only one locality
then escaped, the 'Carp Castle' on its hillock, which was
then the seat of the local feudal lord, one Asano. The
populace on that occasion was saved from starvation by the
action of that prince in opening his supply stores; for weeks
on end he fed his people from his private reserves of rice.
But even these floods must have been far less terrible than
the one that burst upon the unfortunate city only six weeks
after its annihilation by the atomic bomb. For days a light
rain had been falling, with rarely an intermission; on 17
September 1945 this became a cloudburst; and by the
afternoon a storm was blowing which increased in strength
hour by hour, until midnight.
The municipal electricity works, which had resumed functioning only a week before, broke down. In the pitch darkness
almost all the newly-built houses or shacks that had been
quickly put together were either blown over by the hurricane or
washed away by the water.
The darkness was still filled with shouts for help and cries of
fear when, at one A.M. on 19 September, a weird, torch
procession began to wind its way from the fishing village of
Kuba. On his peregrinations through the ruined city Professor Nagaoka had found, not far from what had once been
the Mitsubishi works, splinters of a peculiar sort of synthetic
glass, destined for the pilot's cockpits of military aircraft.
Since he knew that this material burned well, even in a high
wind, he now used it as storm lanterns. Dozens of men were
soon on their way to Hiroshima, carrying these torches.
The Professor hoped that he would be in time to reach his
daughter's house, twenty miles away, where he had stored a
valuable library of books dealing with his special subject,
geology, as well as his unique collection of minerals. When
he approached the house, as dawn was breaking, he saw
books floating away on the river's waves. Nevertheless he
had arrived just in time to save several microscopes as well as
the greater part of his library.
Such luck in misfortune was granted to only a minority
among the population of Hiroshima. Thousands lost in the
great flood those few possessions that had survived the atom
bomb. Houses on the water's edge were, almost without
exception, washed away. While the Pikadon had destroyed
only ten bridges, a further twenty were now rendered impassable, and the various city quarters were effectively severed
from one another.
Even Shinzo Hamai, who in the weeks following the first
disaster had by his example saved so many from despair, lost
courage in face of this new misfortune. When he stepped out
on to the flat roof of the Town Hall and gazed across the
city, for the first time he felt himself overwhelmed by a
profound hopelessness.
'The city looked like a huge lake,' he remembers. 'Beneath
its waves it was possible to detect tiled roofs and the outline
of much else as well. I felt as though this were the final
burial! For what reason had the citizens of Hiroshima been
condemned to such frightful sufferings? Suppose the flood
waters were never to recede, and it were all to remain
drowned forever? In that case, I thought, so much the better. I
said this to myself in all seriousness.'
Yet the sorely and doubly tried people of Hiroshima dealt
with the results of the great flood far more quickly than
Hamai, in his access of despair, had guessed. After all, this
disaster was, so to speak, a normal, natural catastrophe, a
blow of fate of a sort to which the populace had grown
accustomed through the centuries. This was something with
which they could cope! The inundations left a legacy of
dead, wounded and sick, but did so according to certain
rules which were comprehensible and which inflicted no
such terrible scars. For as far back as human memory went,
the inhabitants of this water-girt city had learned how to deal
with the damage left behind by roaring floods and angry
seas. On the other hand, when faced with the unexpectedly
protracted and variable after-effects of the bomb - and
almost everyone was so affected, to a greater or lesser degree they were bewildered, confused and lost.
Shinzo Hamai himself was now compelled, several weeks
after the Pikadon, to seek medical attention. He had suffered
only a negligible foot wound on 6 August, but it stubbornly
refused to heal. Fortunately, the doctor whom he consulted
had attended Professor Tsuzuki's lecture and therefore knew
how to treat his patient.
When the doctor had detected a marked fall in the white
corpuscle content of Hamai's blood, he ordered the supply
chief to take a thorough rest. He was to go up-country, and
have a lot of sleep and a highly nourishing diet. Such a cure
was usually effective in minor cases of the sickness, and
Hamai was soon on his feet again. In more serious cases
medical treatment remained, as before, useless. Through the
whole of the year following the Pikadon, the monthly deathrate in Hiroshima varied between ten and twenty times what it
had been before the catastrophe.
During the second half of September a new worry came to
plague the survivors. Early in the following month, on 3
October, the first foreign troops of the Army of Occupation
were to move into the region. These would be Americans to
begin with, followed by Australians.6 Indoctrinated for years
with the Government's atrocity propaganda and nourished
for centuries on the inevitable legends concerning foreigners
that resulted from Japan's isolationist policy, the people of
Hiroshima really believed that the soldiers who were due to
arrive so soon would in fact be devils in human shape.
Horrible rumours of what they might expect at the hands of
these 'devils' were scarcely modified by the fact that the
representatives of the Allied armed forces whom they had
actually seen - doctors, war correspondents and scientists —
had been not only decent but positively friendly in their
dealings with the natives.
For the first time in Japanese history foreign warriors from
across the sea had set foot on the sacred soil of the fatherland.
Could, indeed might, the conquerors of a nation which for
centuries had believed itself unconquerable be anything other
than sub- or supermen, demons disguised as men? Even the
very sick who had hitherto stubbornly refused to be evacuated
from Hiroshima, wishing at least to die in their homes, now
let themselves be moved to the nearby mountain villages.
Even as well-educated a man as Dr Hachiya passed many a
sleepless night, tormented by the problem of whether or not
he should send his wife, sick as she was, to her parents'
house, far from Hiroshima. As early as September the
Japanese commander of the Chugoku Region, whom the
Allied authorities had temporarily confirmed in office, had
issued a statement which had been posted up and printed in
the newspapers. In the usual pompous official jargon, this
warning of perils to come ran as follows:
'Subject, female attire. Thin, one-piece garments, such as
6
From 31 January 1946, troops of the British Commonwealth took part in
the occupation of the five prefectures that constituted the Chugoku
Region, in which Hiroshima is located. Apart from Australians these troops
included a number of New Zealanders, Indians and units from the British
Isles. The troops were engaged almost exclusively on garrison duty. The
actual military administration of the Region remained, as before, the
responsibility of the United States Eighth Army.
we wear out of doors, will normally be regarded by the
foreigners as night attire. This could lead to impulsive
treatment with severe detrimental consequences. You are
therefore instructed to wear, whenever possible, the monpe.7
'Dress properly, and never in any circumstances expose your
bosoms!
' Watches. These could be regarded as desirable souvenirs.
Therefore do not wear them openly. Women left alone at
home must take especial precautions, and must ensure at all
times that all doors remain effectively locked.
'Avoid every sort of nudity. Do not spit in the street. Do
not relieve yourselves in public.'
In Hiroshima, as indeed throughout the rest of Japan, it
was not the custom to lock doors by day or by night. The
locksmiths therefore had their hands full fitting bolts and
bars. This precaution was one that was soon enough to prove
extremely useful, though not against the expected marauding
by the foreigners. Rather did it become necessary for the
inhabitants to protect their property against hungry fellowcitizens, people who had lost almost everything as the result
of the war and the defeat?
Dazai, the head of the Security Office at the Prefecture, had
prepared an especial diversionary operation for the protection
and reassurance of Hiroshima's female population who felt
themselves to be threatened. As early as 20 August he had
invited a group of honoured businessmen to visit him in his
temporary office, which was located in the ruins of the
Kangyo Ginko Bank. When they were assembled there, he
addressed them as follows: 'Gendemen, I must ask you once
again to put your worthy business at the service of the
fatherland. Are you prepared to do this?' These irreplaceable
men, who had in surprisingly large
7
Women's long trousers, usually drawn tight about the ankles.
numbers survived the Pikadon, replied as one that in the
prevailing circumstances this was unfortunately quite
impossible.
'But the authorities will see to it that you suffer no financial
or other loss,' the police official said, in an attempt to win
them over. 'Just tell us what you need in order to get your
business going again.'
This was language more inclined to win them over. But
Motoji Mino, who took part in this conference and whom I
have to thank for his report of what happened, now said; 'We
have neither bed linen nor kimonos. We've nothing. We
haven't even the one commodity essential for our business.
That's the real problem: we haven't any girls.'
For Mr Mino, like the other gentlemen here assembled,
summoned so urgently by the authorities from the various
places to which they had fled after the bomb, was the
proprietor of a well-known House of Joy in Yayoi-cho. This
had been the red-light district of the port and garrison city of
Hiroshima, and had been famous as such throughout all
Japan.
Mr Mino, who, when I met him, was a soberly but
elegantly clad man in his late sixties, has described the
circumstances that then prevailed as follows:
'At that time, that is to say just after the Pikadon, I really
looked a thorough tramp. I was covered in filth and
bleeding from at least fifty or sixty wounds. Under my left
eye - look, you can still see the scar - a deep piece of flesh
had been torn from my face. I had to carry both my arms in
slings, and the only shoes I still owned were a pair of downat-heel straw sandals. As for what I should do about my
business, no, I really hadn't even managed to think about
that. I simply hadn't got the heart to try, and that went for
my colleagues too. But this Dazai man just wouldn't give in.
He spoke of "loyalty to the nation" and of the urgent need
for "creating institutions that would from the very beginning
serve to prevent unfortunate occurrences". Or something of
the sort. Anyhow, I know he used a lot of very long words.
'Then he got down to practical matters, and we became
rather more attentive. The provincial administration, he said,
really was prepared to spend money on this project. Two or
three millions were earmarked for us - and this was before
the inflation, so that that really was a very large sum. We
ourselves would not have to spend a penny, while any profits
that might accrue from the scheme would be ours alone.
'Later on, needless to say, that proved to be a swindle. The
State never gives anything away. They asked for every single
yen back. With interest, of course, and unfortunately there
was not a single written proof of all the fine promises with
which we had been led up the garden path. But we're a goodnatured lot, and we let them talk us into it. We joined
together to create a parent concern which we called
Consolation Inc. Each of us contributed 20,000 yen. We
elected as our chairman Hisao Yamamoto - you may have
heard of him, he was later Vice-Mayor - and they appointed
me his deputy. Our offices? Well, the police didn't mind, so
to begin with we just used theirs. After all, we were all in this
together.'
So before the first Occupation troops ever arrived in
the Hiroshima Region, Action fansho (Operation Houses of
Consolation) was already under way. During the whole month
of September the police launch, ffoan Maru, travelled from
island to island and from port to port, buying women. They
finally collected some five hundred girls. A few of these had
already followed this profession in the past. Others - and
they constituted the majority - were simply sold by parents
or relations who had lost all their money in the war. A
further two hundred recruits for the proposed brothels were
enrolled in the city of Hiroshima itself.
One month after they had first been summoned by the
Security Chief, the brothel keepers were able to report to
Police Lieutenant Dazai that they had completed their patriotic duties. In and about Hiroshima they had set up ten
tanshos. And these were the first postwar houses in the region
to contain something approaching comfort, with in some
cases even a trace of elegance and luxury. The biggest
Consolation House (lansho No. 1) was established close to
the entrance to the barracks in the suburb of Kaita, where
the greater part of the Occupation troops garrisoning Hiroshima were to be quartered, lansho No. 2 was located in
Hire, near the former headquarters of the Japanese fleet at
Kure, which was now envisaged as the headquarters of the
Occupation Forces in all western Japan.
On the day that the 34th Infantry Regiment of the Eighth
Army marched in, the Houses of Consolation were decorated,
beflagged, and open for business. The 'foreign devils' were
catered for.
But the Americans turned out to be very different men
from what Japanese propaganda had described, causing such
terror. Ichiro Kawamoto, a young mechanic working in the
Saka Electricity Generating Plant, not far from Hiroshima,
has described the arrival of the Occupation troops in the
following terms:
'On that day the whole sky was filled with foreign planes.
All of us, who had learned from our history lessons in school
how frightful wars are, had sent our wives and children far
away inland. Doors were carefully locked and we were all
very nervous when we arrived at work,
The autumn wind had begun to moan again. All along the
road leading to the city Japanese policemen were stationed at
fifty-yard intervals. It was said that the American troops would
land at Kure and march from there towards Hiroshima. We
had heard that they would billet in the Kaitaichi district,
where the arsenal used to be.
'During the midday break we all ran to the wire fence
around the Electricity Works, to watch the Yankee columns
marching past. Jeeps, jeeps, and more jeeps, pulling landing
craft on wheels, a powerful, mechanized force. As they
drove along, some of the American soldiers were whistling
cheerfully. They had to telescope their long legs every which
way in order to fit into the little jeeps. There was no shooting.
Quite the contrary. Chewing-gum and chocolate were being
thrown to the children by the men of the column. The
children had been the first to dare make their way to the
edge of the road. The little ones quickly lost all fear and
were soon shouting "Hello! hello!" to the soldiers as they
went by.
'An agile signal corps soldier shinned up a telephone post
and made fast a wire. The march past went on until late in
the night. Towards evening two American soldiers walked
into our canteen. They were so tall that they almost banged
their heads in the little, narrow doorway. The Japanese did
not cause any sort of disturbances whatever.'
This report is typical of the atmosphere that prevailed
when the Americans marched into Hiroshima. The absence
of friction with which this region was occupied - a region
which only very recently had felt the full impact of war in a
peculiarly horrifying manner - came as a surprise to both
sides. The GIs had expected to encounter in Hiroshima,
more than anywhere else, violent outbursts of hatred. Yet
what they met almost everywhere was politeness and even
hospitality, just as was the case throughout the rest of Japan.
The population of this ancient centre of pilgrimage was
predominantly Buddhist and they seemed to be reconciled
to their especial fate. Indeed, there were even in the city of
Hiroshima at that time people who appeared to find a
peculiar source of pride in the fact that they had experienced
'the most powerful bomb in history' and had survived. It was
then not realized, needless to say, that the after-effects of
this gruesome new weapon would continue to be felt for
years to come.
To begin with, the Americans kept very much out of sight in
the ruined city. Only a rare uniformed figure was to be seen
in the 'atomic desert' that had been the city centre. They
usually went there in pairs, in order to take each other's
photographs, mostly against the background of the former
Exhibition Building, whose smashed dome came bit by bit to
symbolize Hiroshima. On one of the gigantic tottering walls
of this building, put up in 1913 by the Austrian architect Letzel,
it happened that one day there was found, scratched in rusty
letters, the slogan NO MORE HIROSHIMAS, written in
English. This was to be the clarion cry of the anti-atom-bomb
movement throughout the world. Who first coined this
phrase - it is assumed that it was an American - has never
been discovered.8
For some of the inhabitants of Hiroshima - how many
exactly cannot of course be established - it proved impossible
to reconcile the harmless and friendly behaviour of the
'foreign devils' with the stereotyped image in which they had
hitherto believed. One such was Kazuo M. A few weeks
after the arrival of the Americans he wrote in his diary:
'White, decent-looking and cleanly dressed Americans now
walk about hand in hand with grubby little Japanese girls.
Whenever they come to one of the many puddles that dot the
pot-holed streets, he will swing his "girl friend" across and
then jump over with one long stride. The sailors walk close
beside their little friends, as if to act as living shields,
protecting those fragile creatures against damage. The girls
are moved to tears by the generosity and kindliness of the
American soldiers. It's making them conceited now, and later
they'll give birth to half-castes. To me this exaggerated
friendliness on the part of the Yankees seems simply ridiculous ...'
The various administrative offices of the Province and Town
of Hiroshima seem to have been somewhat disappointed
by the discreet reticence of their foreign conquerors. They
had expected their new masters to take the reins of
government in their hands at once, and, what is more, to
rule firmly and even harshly. For years the officials in
the province had grown accustomed to a state of affairs
whereby even the smallest details were settled 'at a
higher level' and all
8
The slogan NO MORE HIROSHIMAS first appeared in print in the
London Daily Express, as part of a report by W. Burchett. This Australian
journalist made his way to Hiroshima, on his own initiative, reaching the
city on 3 September 1945. He was thus the first foreign newspaperman
to see the atom-bombed ruins.
decisions were made 'in Tokyo'. The Americans had promised
the communes a greater degree of self-administration and
freedom of choice, and it now began to be made plain that
they actually meant what they had said. It is true that
certain foreign advisers moved into the offices of the provincial
administration and into the Town Hall, but to begin with they
remained as much as possible in the background, out of sight,
and frequently gave the Japanese officials more freedom and
responsibility than those functionaries actually desired or knew
what to do with.
When the Occupation troops moved into Hiroshima early
in October of 1945, the city was still without a municipal
head, for Mayor Kuriya had been reported killed or missing
since 6 August. Shortly after the Pikadon the city administration had sent a man to the house of its first magistrate,
which was located on the river's bank. He returned to say
that in the charred ruins he had found the burned remnants
of one grown-up and of one small child. This report was
regarded as too vague to warrant the announcement that the
missing Mayor was dead. It might be that he, like so many
others, had fled to a nearby village in the mountains and that
he had been too ill since then to manage to communicate
with his colleagues of the city administration.
Reliable details concerning the fate of Mayor Kuriya did
not come to light until his grievously wounded wife was
brought back to Hiroshima for medical treatment.
'My husband is certainly no longer alive,' she was able to
say, while on her own deathbed, and her statement was
officially recorded. 'On the morning of the "the day" he was
sitting in the sun on the terrace of our house, explaining to
our youngest son the meaning of Buddha's teaching. It was a
peaceful moment, which we were all enjoying together. And
we were so happy ... That little pile of ash that you have
found in my house is all that remains of three generations of
our family.'
Once this statement had been officially recorded, the city
assembly of Hiroshima could at last set about the business of
choosing a new Mayor. When they met it transpired that no
less than eleven of their members were no longer alive. Most
of the other town councillors were also unable to attend,
since they were still suffering from the 'atomic sickness'.
Therefore it was decided to postpone the choice of a new
Mayor until at least a few more councillors were fit enough
to take part in the discussion.
The choice of a first magistrate for the city became finally
so urgent that it was decided temporarily to fill the gaps
caused by the illness of so many councillors by calling in
senior civil servants in their stead. Thus on 22 October
1945, over two and a half months after the disaster, in one of
the few rooms of the Town Hall not totally destroyed by fire,
the appointment of a new Mayor took place. Since there
were neither chairs nor tables, nor even cushions and straw
mats in adequate numbers, the delegates had to squat on a
floor covered only with tent-flaps. This assembly of Hiroshima's leading citizens thus resembled rather some robbers'
conclave than a reunion of the duly elected representatives of
the people. Or so Shinzo Hamai remembers. And Hamai, in
recognition of the great services he had rendered his city as
supply chief, was now nominated Vice-Mayor.
The first Mayor to be elected by a show of hands was a
sickly old man named Kihara, who for many years had
represented Hiroshima in the Japanese Diet. In the first
instance the Occupation Authorities raised no objection to
his appointment, even though Kihara had for years been the
spokesman of the extreme right-wing Yokusan Imperial
Movement in the Tokyo Parliament. Later, when this first
postwar Mayor of Hiroshima was dismissed before the expiry
of his time of office owing to his compromised political past,
he could maintain with truth that he had never really sought
to fill this onerous and difficult position.
'It is my belief,' Shinzo Hamai says, 'that none of the long
line of city heads of Hiroshima had ever had to hold office in
such trying and thankless conditions as those that prevailed
during the mayoralty of Mayor Kihara. The rooms in which
we had to work lacked both doors and glass in the windows.
Only a few walls were standing, askew and blackened by fire.
The floors were uneven ... In winter the snow blew into the
Mayor's parlour and into his deputy's office, and those rooms
were then carpeted white. When the weather was cold, we
sat at our desks huddled in overcoats, with our hats on our
heads. Lacking coal for heating, we collected any sort of
rubbish that would burn, with the result that our offices
became filled with clouds of black smoke.'
At long last Hiroshima possessed once again something
that resembled a municipal administration, but this was an
authority without clearly defined powers, almost without
means and with scarcely any civil force to ensure that its
orders were in fact carried out, for the police force had
almost ceased to exist Most of the policemen, fearful of the
'cleaning up operation' that the Occupying Powers had said
would be initiated against adherents of the old regime, had
either left the service or were temporarily in hiding as
civilians.
On 5 November the local newspaper Chugoku Shimbun
summed up the amount of reconstruction so far achieved in
the following critical article:
'In the offices there lie mountains of papers and documents
awaiting examination. The rigidity of bureaucratic procedure is
primarily responsible for the fact that this general confusion
cannot be sorted out more rapidly. The highest office in the
city, the office of the mayor, remains entombed in silence.
'Housing. The building of houses is to be systematically
begun on 15 November. The plan calls for 5,000 houses per
annum, with one shop for every twenty-five homes.
'Gas. There is no prospect of a gas supply before the end
of the year.
'Fish. Fish should be available once again in the markets
by the end of the year.
'Bridges. A typical example of bureaucratic slowness.
'Electricity. To date no plan available.
'Tramways. At present only ten trams are in commission
on the main route, eight on the Miyajima route and five
municipal buses. These twenty-three vehicles must cater for
an average of 42,000 persons daily. It is hoped that a further
five or six vehicles will be made available in the near future.'
In the late autumn of 1945 a rumour (later proved false)
cast a gleam of hope over the devastated city: it was said that
those afflicted with the 'radiation sickness' were beginning to
recover. But, in answer to inquiries from the press, the
doctors at Hiroshima Infirmary stated: 'The number of
patients undergoing treatment as the result of injuries suffered from the atom-bombing declined during November by
300. This decline, however, is due almost exclusively to a
decline in the number of those being treated for burns and
other maladies not caused by the effects of radioactivity.'
In September the Americans had proclaimed the principle
that the press was now free; but their first action was to
introduce a press censorship. The censor immediately forbade the further printing of all news concerning the appearance of 'radiation sickness' symptoms among the survivors of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a secondary consequence of the
atom-bombing of those cities. On the other hand reassuring
reports (such as one in the Mainicht Shimbun to the effect
that the number of cases of the so-called atom-bomb sickness
had dropped to almost zero) were released without demur by
Tokyo for transmission to foreign newspapers.9 The result of
this was to create a wave of premature optimism, not only in
Japan but throughout the world, concerning the consequences to health of the atomic explosions. The coming of
spring was to show that the decline in the number of
'radiation sickness' patients in the hospital during the autumn
and winter months was due to one cause only; the sick just
could not hope to survive the cold weather in unheated
wards with neither doors nor windows. During December,
Dr Hachiya found himself even obliged temporarily to close
his hospital. But this was not because there were less people
with the atomic sickness: they were simply being cared for by
then1 families at home, just as soon as those families had a
home again. At about this time a new worry began to
appear in
9
A curious item, worthy of mention, is a report in the Mainichi Shimbun
for 16 February 1946. This maintained that die effect of the radiation on
persons who had been at least three kilometres from the centre of the
explosions was positively beneficial, in that it had acted therapeutically in
cases of tuberculosis and stomach ulcer.
Hiroshima, as is shown by a perusal of the files of the
Chugoku Shimbun. A steep social and moral decline was
becoming evident among the populace. Almost every day
there were reports of robbery, assault, rape and murder. No
possessions seemed safe any more. Even the first, emergency
letter-boxes, which were of wood, were immediately broken
up, carried away, and burned for fuel. At last, early in
December 1945, this newspaper attempted to summarize
and explain the distressing phenomenon of the growing crime
wave in the following passage:
'The number of crimes reported during the month of
November in Hiroshima and the neighbouring district is
already as high as the figure for all criminal activities throughout
the entire period of the war. The young people billeted in the
educational centre of Ujina roam the streets without
occupation. Particularly prevalent are crimes of violence. The
main centre of infection responsible for the mounting crime
wave is the "black market", where a new and quite unscrupulous type of entrepreneur now flourishes.
'The newspapers have uncovered the failures of our former
military caste, our Government, our plutocrats and our officer
class. A great wave of hatred against our leaders of yesterday
has thereby been created. This is now advanced as an excuse
for the evil deeds of today ... It is maintained: "The former
ruling class has forfeited its political and military privileges:
so today we enjoy the right to steal!"'
ORPHANS AND GANGSTERS
1
One morning Kazuo M. found that his army boots - which
had been issued to him, as to all the other survivors, from
former military supply depots - were missing. He immediately
suspected the Jutyji, those homeless orphans who were
roaming the ruins and suburbs of Hiroshima in their thousands. Only the elder ones among them had actually experienced the catastrophe, for almost all children under the age of
eleven had been evacuated along with their school-teachers to
villages far away in the country long before the bomb was
dropped. When the first horrible news reached these villages
the immediate reaction of the grown-ups had been an attempt
to conceal the truth from the children. But soon even the
most remote hamlets in the highlands and the tiniest fishing
villages became so overcrowded with the many refugees from
the atomic hell that the school-children began to suspect the
worst: something frightful must have happened in the city
that they still regarded as their home.
Then the parents or grandparents of an occasional child
came to visit him and took him away with them. But most of
the children waited in vain. For a long time now they had
stopped going to their classrooms. For hours and days on
end they stood outside the railway stations or lined the roads
that led to Hiroshima, hoping that their loved ones would
soon appear.
Finally a few boys, the most enterprising ones needless to
say, lost patience. They decided to make their way back
home independently in their search for their parents. Others
quickly followed this example, and in the end even the girls
refused to remain in their foster-homes. On foot, thumbing
lifts on lorries, riding stolen bicycles or as 'black passengers'
on the trains, they succeeded in returning to the ruined city.
But only a small proportion found their parents again. Six
thousand - some estimates run as high as ten thousand children of Hiroshima had lost both father and mother in the
disaster. So now they set about trying to make their own way in
life. A few managed to find a home with relatives who had
survived the catastrophe. But grandmothers, grandfathers,
uncles and aunts did not have enough to eat themselves.
Furthermore most such relatives were sick, and demanded of
the children that they help with the housework or that they
'bring in' something to eat from outside. The children
therefore often found that they could do better on their own.
Kazuo M. spent the whole day wandering through Hiroshima, in the hope that he might somehow stumble upon the
thief who had stolen his boots. Towards evening he found
himself in the market near the main railway station, where
almost all stolen goods turned up in the end.
The din was audible from afar off, and the bright lights of
the rows of stalls that had sprung up all around the eki
(station) dazzled the eye. Hundreds of people clustered about
the little fires that the orphans kept going with splintered
wood from the ruins. Many of these fires burned all night.
Any person, who would come closer, in search of warmth,
had first to pay the boy at least a two-yen 'entrance fee'. This
was one of the best (and most honest) ways of earning money
that the orphans had found for themselves.
Even larger crowds pressed about those 'shops' and 'restaurants' - in reality mere half-open booths, huts made out
of planks quickly knocked together - which already had
electric light. Since the 10th of September the electric
current had been on again, at least in some districts of the
town, but there was still a great shortage of bulbs. Their cool
and steady light seemed a rediscovery, and therefore once
again a new 'technical miracle', to the survivors. The narrow
streets between the booths were filled with the sharp and
acrid smells (they could bring tears to the eye) from the
cook-shops where fishes and little crabs were frying in
dubious oils of every sort - even machine lubricants were
used. Over open fires Chinese cooked thick fish soups,
greasy, shiny noodles and sharply-spiced vegetables; Koreans
offered meat roasted on rows of small spits, and it was said
that the flesh thus cooked had originated in the pound for
stray dogs located on the other side of the railway station.
Duburoku, a home-distilled and particularly strong drink,
and methylated spirits, which later drove many addicts blind,
were easily obtainable here, near the railway station, as were
other commodities for which there was less demand, such as
useless wedding gowns or useful but shabby household
furnishings of every sort. Particularly sought-after were pots
and bottles, which had frequently taken on the strangest
shapes after passing through the 'great fire'.
The crowds seeped lazily through the market. What they
wanted was to see life again, feel it, smell it, taste it. Here and
there a whirlpool would come into existence in the turgid
stream. Two drunks would be punching one another. A cry
would go up of 'Dorobo! dorobo! Thief! Thief!' but the
pickpocket would have already vanished into the crowd.
Thus Kazuo moved slowly onwards. He carefully examined
the contents of every booth where boots were offered for sale.
And at last, there they were - over there! There could be no
doubt about it. He recognized them from their size, from their
colour, he knew every crease in the familiar leather.
*Hi, those over there! - ' he was pointing with his finger.
'Those boots belong to me. They're mine.'
'Certainly,' replied the dealer. 'For thirty yen. Dead cheap
at the price.'
'Those boots were stolen from me last night or early this
morning. I'm not going to pay for my own boots. Give them
to me!'
The dealer, an undersized fellow with long, untidy hair and
a scar that ill became his cheerful features, seemed not at all
put out.
'What next!' he said, raising his voice, for he knew by
experience that a scene of this sort attracted potential customers. 'Stolen, you say? What proofs have you of that''
Kazuo thrust forward his right foot. (Of course they're my
boots. Size nine. I only need try them on.'
His voice sounded slightly uncertain. The boots that had
been issued him for nothing had, in fact, always been several
sizes too large.
But the dealer appeared to accept Kazuo's argument. 'We
don't want any trouble, do we?' he said. 'You can have them.
Here!'
Yet when Kazuo leaned forward to take the boots, the
dealer pulled them back, with a laugh: 'You don't want to
steal, do you? Thirty yen, please.'
Kazuo flushed with anger.
'But they're my boots. Father and I wear them on alternate
days. They're the most valuable thing we still possess.'
'If they're as valuable as all that, thirty yen is dead cheap,'
the dealer said cheerfully.
Kazuo was no longer able to control himself. He was close
to tears as he shouted angrily: 'I want my shoes. They're
mine.'
He looked around for help to the crowd that had now
collected about the dealer and himself, but there was nobody
there prepared to put in a word on his behalf. They were all
mere spectators, and their sole interest was in seeing how
this little drama would turn out in the end.
Now the dealer made it plain that he was beginning to lose
patience with this disturber of the peace. He shouted at the
boy: 'I can't waste all day with you. For the last time: thirty
yen or buzz off, at once.'
Kazuo was taken aback. Beside himself with rage, he also
shouted: 'This is a thieves' market! A nation of thieves! Yes,
that's what we've become, a nation of robbers!'
Even insults did not appear to move the crowd. They
simply pushed past Kazuo. The 'spectacle' was over. They
ambled away in search of the next entertainment.
As if to mock Kazuo in his misrry about the stolen shoes, an
orphan accosted him as he was making his way home
through the darkened streets between the ruins. 'Hi, mister,
shoeshine?'
He did not stop, merely waving the child away. The boy
was not to be put off so easily, and running beside the
reluctant customer he said sarcastically: 'What's the matter
with you, oniichant™ In a bad mood this evening?'
Kazuo pointed at his wooden sandals.
'Can't you see?' he grumbled. 'Or are you trying to make a
fool of me?'
He raised his hand as if to strike the boy. The thief must
have been just such a one as this. Perhaps it was this very
boy. The child was used to dodging blows, and jumped
nimbly aside. When Kazuo saw the fear in his eyes, he
dropped his hand and asked: 'No parents, eh?'
The boy nodded, his eyes on the ground.
'Pikadon? Kazuo asked.
'Father, mother, brother, sister ...' the boy replied mechanically, as though repeating a liturgy learned by heart.
'I know how it is,' said Kazuo, laying a hand on his
shoulder. 'I myself lost my best friend. He was called Yasuji,'
And he found a crumpled ten-yen note in his pocket,
which he gave to the boy, who immediately ran away before
Kazuo could change his mind and ask for it hack.
'Look after yourself, old chap/ Kazuo called after him in
friendly tones. But the boy was no longer there.
Such was Kazuo's first acquaintance with one of the
orphan boys, but in the weeks to come he was to get to know
many of these little vagabonds. They let him join them on his
nocturnal wanderings and they talked to him as if he were
one of themselves. For example, Kazuo noted down the
following conversation as typical of many similar ones:
1(1
Old maid.
'Saw four or five furoji. With them, two very young
panpans.n They were seated around a small fire, and I joined
them.
'"Hi, niichan, if you want to get warm, you must pay first.
We don't do this for fun."' I handed over the usual "entrance
fee" and was then allowed to squat close to the flames. My
arrival had interrupted their conversation, and they had all
fallen silent. Now they began again.
' "You can say what you like," said one of the boys who
appeared to be the eldest. He spoke emphatically. "You girls
are lucky. When you own nothing at all, you've still got
something to sell. And even when you've sold it, you've still
got it. As for us, we have to steal."
'"Absolute nonsense," said one of the panpans. "Maybe
we look all right. After all, we have to look good. But I'm
telling you, I'm fed to the teeth. If I had the choice, I'd
rather be a thief, any day of the week."
'And the other girl agreed. "Definitely. One man after
another ... and they do anything they like with a girl. And
then you get a dose on top of it all. And over and over and
over again, always the same story."
'"That may be. But they hunt us as if we were wild beasts.
Anyone would think we stole for the fun of the thing. If they
knew .. .*
' "Sanchan, don't let's quarrel," said the younger of the two
street-walkers. "Things are bound to go badly in a country
that's lost a war, for boys and for girls. I said it before and I say it
again: we're just scrap. There's no hope for us."'
But was it true, what Kazuo M. had heard and written in his
diary? Was it only physical hunger that had driven the
orphans of Hiroshima to thieving and prostitution? Far more
was it another sort of hunger, the hunger for excitement, for
adventure, for freedom from all restraint, and the vast and
" A postwar word for casual prostitutes.
unique opportunity that circumstances now offered to satisfy
this hunger. It was the appeal of chaos.
Later, when conditions in Hiroshima had become normal
once again and most of these children without parents were
lodged in orphanages, they would speak with nostalgia of that
frightful, lawless epoch, and would all constantly attempt to
regain the freedom that had once been theirs. And it must be
pointed out that not only were they treated with great
understanding in these institutions, but also that they were far
better fed than were the average members of the population.
But neither words nor gift parcels from overseas could hold
them back. In an interview with the Chugoku Shimbun an
orphanage manager by the name of Kamikuri complained:
'They run away because they miss the excitement of the
district around the railway station, and can't forget it. Some of
the children have already broken out seven or eight times, and
even the most timid ones have done so once or twice.'
There was another factor to be considered: the children of
Hiroshima had learned to despise the grown-ups. During the
panic they had with their own eyes observed the most
disgusting scenes of brutality, of selfishness, of a crass and
naked determination to save one's own life regardless of what
might happen to others. Grown men had trampled upon the
bodies of adolescent boys and girls, had stolen the last drop of
water from those feebler than themselves. They had quite
ruthlessly shown that they were the stronger. And after the
war - as I heard from the manager of the Ninoshima
Orphanage - it happened over and over again that relatives
would seize the possessions of parents killed in the Pikadon,
possessions that should by right have gone to the orphaned
children. 'The children,' he said to me, 'now think that before
the disaster the grown-ups were only pretending, and they
have sworn never again to be taken in by their hypocritical lies'.12
12
The crude generalizations of the children are in part confirmed by a
statistical analysis carried out by an American psychologist who examined
the emotional reactions during the atomic period and found that, of a typical
'sample' of 589 persons, less than one third (153 persons) had given any
assistance to others. And deliberate attempts by those examined to portray
their own behaviour at that time in as favourable a light as possible must
further be taken into account. See Sparks, Woodbury, Panic among A-bomb
Casualties at Hiroshima, a mimeographed typescript, Hiroshima, 1957.
With endless patience a few people in Hiroshima attempted,
during the postwar years, to regain the confidence of the youth
that other grown-ups had destroyed. One of these was
manager Kamikuri, already referred to. When on one
occasion he discovered that he had punished one of the
children unjustly, he assembled the entire orphanage and in
their presence, without saying a word, whipped his own left
hand until it bled freely. Then he spoke: 'I have made an
innocent child suffer pain. As expiation for this I have
inflicted twice as much pain upon myself. If one of you
should still feel anger towards me when he leaves this room, I
shall not rest until I have found him and begged him once
again for forgiveness.'
Then there was Yoshimaro Mori, a youthful and idealistic
gym instructor. He was so moved by the sufferings of the
orphans that on his own initiative he founded a refuge for
parentless children on the fortified island of Ninoshima,
some two miles from the city. But at first the little vagabonds
did not willingly follow him either. To begin with he had to
catch them, quite literally, and have them transported under
supervision to their new home. However, he succeeded
eventually in transforming barracks formerly filled with
misery (in the First World War they had been a camp for
German prisoners of war, while after the Pikadon countless
sick persons had been moved here to die) into a happy,
indeed a model, colony of children. He received no thanks
for this. In 1955 he was accused - quite unjustly, as was later
proved - for reasons of local political intrigue, of having
embezzled money. He committed hara-kiri in despair at the
disgrace thus brought upon his Orphans' Island.
Only a fraction of the orphaned children could find help and
sustenance in the homes, to begin with. The others gravitated
almost without exception into a new segment of society, a
sort of anti-society that became steadily more apparent
amidst the ruins of Hiroshima: the gangsters' hierarchy. The
'Orphans that roamed the streets' constituted the lowest class
of this society. They provided the 'goods' either in the
capacity of pickpockets and thieves or as the manual workers
who carted the 'black rice', 'black fish' and 'black oil'. They
discovered where illegally distilled spirits were to be obtained,
they begged and sold cigarettes, they procured under-age
girls, in fact they acted as middlemen in every field, serving
salesman and customer alike. Not only were they constantly
on the prowl for new sources of 'raw materials' but also for
new markets in which to dispose of anything whatsoever.
The men who assigned them their jobs, gave them their
orders and in general controlled them were the bosses of the
underworld. In this period of anarchy they assumed the role
normally filled by the representatives of law and order. For at
least six months they were in fact the men who held power in
Hiroshima.
It was Dr Hachiya who first told me about the postwar
hegemony of the gangsters in Hiroshima. And although the
doctor usually spoke bitterly about the general neglect that
had been Hiroshima's lot in the period following the Pikadon,
when talking of the gangsters his tone was almost one of
friendliness. According to him they had at least attempted to
establish some sort of order, and had intervened energetically to
suppress casual theft and robbery with violence.
The doctor said that he had even formed a friendship of a
sort with one of the leading gangsters. He had first met
Koreyoshi Z. in a tavern that belonged to his friend Katsutani,
in the fishing village of Jigozen. Z. had then spoken quite
openly over the sake of the high position he occupied in the
underworld and of the huge sums of money he was making
since the Pikadon. He was, it seemed, collecting 'protection
money* from the booths around the railway station, which
provided him with a large and regular income.
Z. maintained that he came of a priestly family, belonging
to the Buddhist Nichiren sect, and had himself been born in a
temple. In any event he regarded himself as an educated
man and did possess a certain gift for expressing himself in
words. At least he knew how to tell, in highly dramatic terms,
boastful stories of his prowess in various gang fights in which
he had invariably played an heroic part. His masterpiece,
which the doctor can repeat to this day, was the tale of his
great cunning when pursued by a whole pack of rivals whose
boss he had shot. He lured diem into the big tent of the
Yano Circus, where he was 'working' at that time, and got
rid of them by letting all the lions out of their cages.
This 'big operator' had lost a leg and wore a wooden one,
which squeaked and thereby suggested his nickname, Gitton.
When he was not squeaking on foot through his 'preserves' in
and about Hiroshima, he was bumping over the pot-holed
streets on his motor-scooter. In either case he was forever on
the move. So far as his coiffure went, he was in the swim.
Like all the other gangsters, he copied the GI haircut. All
members of the underworld had their hair cut in this foreign
style; they also had jackets tailored for them to resemble as
closely as could be the tight-fitting 'Eisenhower jackets'
sported by the conquerors. Their language was spiced with
slang learned at the movies.
Z. had his pride. He was no common thief, but a successor
of the Kyokaku, those 'knightly robbers' of the folk-tales who
stole from the rich and helped the poor. Or so he maintained.
Dr Hachiya, therefore, one day took him up on this. 'Look
here,' said the doctor, 'for the last few days thieves have
been active in this district. They are robbing us, and we have
already lost almost everything owing to the bomb. They
are taking our last few possessions. They're your ko-buns
(comrades), aren't they? Can't you do anything to put a stop to
such wicked behaviour?'
To which Z. is said to have replied: 'You really feel
absolutely at ease with me, don't you, Doctor? Quite right,
and don't you worry. If anything of yours is stolen, come and
tell me about it straight away. Either the article itself will be
returned to you at once, or if I can't immediately lay my
hands on it, I'll see to it that you get something else of the
same sort only better.'
Dr Hachiya has good reason to believe that the gangsters
at that time were not only co-operating more or less officially
with the police, but were also meeting and doing deals with
representatives of the Occupation Authorities. In order to
frustrate action by the so-called 'third nationality' - by which
is meant the Korean and Chinese immigrants, who for
decades had been treated by the Japanese as second-class
citizens - the police were quite ready to collaborate with
those underworld organizations of which they had knowledge.
Since the Koreans and the Chinese were classified by die
Occupation Authorities as members of 'liberated nations' the
under-strength Japanese police force was not entitled to act
against them. The members of these 'liberated nations' had
formed themselves into something resembling military units
for the purpose of self-protection, and, more than once,
pitched battles had broken out in the railway station district:
on the one side would be bands of Koreans in transit,
determined to plunder the black market between trains, on
the other the local toughs.
Furthermore, the gangs had existed in Hiroshima for
centuries. For as far back as human memory went, no
building operation (in particular road-making) had been
undertaken without the supervision of the Oka~gumt (gumi
means gang). This gang constantly recruited fresh strength
from the ever-present crowds of released convicts. Until the
bombing control of the lucrative red-light district that used
to serve this garrison town had also been in the hands of this
gang; they ran the numerous brothels, bars, night-clubs and
gambling joints.
In the postwar period, however, a rival gang quickly
obtained both power and prestige. This was the Murakamigumi, among the leaders of which was numbered the celebrated Gitton. It had seized control of the black market. Its
bosses became thus the 'protectors' of the booths and organized all the 'smaller operators' such as the pickpockets,
beggars, dope-peddlers and street-walkers: these latter operated
in very large numbers in the railway station district.
Boss Z. had his finger in many another pie, particularly in
certain obscure undertakings connected with the reconstruction. It was not for nothing that He appointed the torpedomanufacturer Ishida, who had made millions during the war,
as 'honorary boss' of the Murakami-gumi. The gang leader
and the war profiteer were not the sort of men to let grass
grow under their feet. Whenever they had carried out a
really successful deal, they would give a great banquet to the
entire population of the little village, not far from Hiroshima,
where Mr Ishida had found refuge. On such occasions rice
wine, now a rarity, would flow like water, and each of the
guests would find in his little wooden food-box delicacies
which were not only beyond price, but were actually unobtainable
at that time.
When Z. was drunk he would hold forth on his favourite
theme. This dealt with 'thieves' honour'. He would maintain
angrily that the petty pickpockets and larceny men who had
graduated in the postwar years to more honourable tasks
frequently ignored the 'thieves' code', according to which it
was, for example, immoral to steal from people who were
starving. He refused to admit that he was himself the adored
boss, hero and model of these very 'beginners' about whom
he was complaining, and who saw no way of combining his
alleged code of honour with their need for making a living.
He said that their admiration filled him with disgust, and the
most that they could hope for from him was a contemptuous
sneer.
THE TABLET OF THE DEAD
1
So demoralizing had been the effect of the Bomb on the
majority of the survivors that very few of them were in
any way renewed or strengthened by their experience of
frightfulness. One exception, however, was Ichiro Kawamoto. I
first got to know him twelve years after 'that day*. He was then,
quite literally, a frog. Some time before, he had begun to
work as a sandwichman for a Hiroshima hotel. He was
costumed as a Kappa, one of those fabulous creatures that
are said to carry on a weird existence in the pools of Japan's
temples and that do live a life of sorts in the creative
imagination of its advertising experts.
To begin with I thought I'd never be able to put up with
this job/ he told me. 'Humping this placard on my back
through the crowded streets in the centre of the city became
almost unbearable after an hour, and I felt that all the people
were staring at me, not at what I was carrying. At first I had
to wear a Happi-coat (a short coat), with a black bandage over
one eye. Like a pirate. I looked really absurd, and I felt
ashamed that all the people should see me. Then one day a
little girl of about eleven ran up to me. She walked along
beside me for a bit and sang a little song that Ryo Ikebe
had first made popular in some film or other. It goes:
"Sandwichman, sandwichman, you're the friend of everyone". I stroked her hair and said: "Thank you, thank you!"
Since then I haven't minded being stared at and I quite
enjoy this arubeit. It's only four hours a day, four days a
week - Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, from
six to ten each evening. That gives me plenty of time for
other things.'
1S
A German word, Arbeit> adopted into the Japanese language. It means
hard casual labour, done in a man's spare rime to supplement his income
from his normal job.
It was in order to learn more about these 'other things'
that I had arranged to meet Kawamoto. Almost everyone in
Hiroshima who talked to me about the after-effects of the
disaster and about the reconstruction period had at some
time or other mentioned this simple day-labourer. Yes, it was
true that everybody knew him in Hiroshima. This, however,
was not because he lugged placards through the streets four
days a week, either on foot or perched upon an ancient,
rickety bicycle. It was because he gave something which
nobody else in the world seemed willing or able to spare: he
gave his time.
Whenever a sick or unemployed survivor of the Pikadon
needs help, advice, an extra pair of hands, someone to patch
up a quarrel, or simply just a baby-sitter to look after the
kids for a couple of hours, the little man with the long nose
and the sad eyes is always available.
He could have lived a safe, calm and obscure existence as
an electrical mechanic, and by now he might even have risen
to the rank of engineer, but the Bomb blew all his plans
asunder.
'In an age when such atrocities can happen, what is
called "making a career for oneself" really becomes totally
unimportant.' Such is Ichiro Kawamoto's opinion. 'This is a
time in which people should devote all their energies to their
fellow-men, helping them, serving them, explaining things to
them, and fighting to make sure that nothing of that sort ever
happens again.'
He expresses such sentiments quite simply and without
grandiloquence, but rather with a timid smile as though
asking forgiveness for the big words. I assume he would not
have uttered them at all, had I not questioned him.
My conversations with that day-labourer and friend of
humanity, Ichiro Kawamoto, have now been going on for
over two years. They began in his dilapidated house beneath
the shadow of the 'atomic cupola' beside the entrance to
which is a sign that reads Atelier pour la paix et I'amitie; and
they went on, with our mutual friend Kaoru Ogura acting as
middleman, week after week, in the form of an interchange
of letters. I thus learned Kawamoto's entire life story bit by
bit. There was only one period concerning which he would
not, for a long time, tell me anything at all: this was the
period that began on 6 August 1945. When I asked Ogura
what the reason for this was, he
wrote to me:
'In reply to your questions as to why he only ever speaks of
events subsequent to 1948, he (Kawamoto) explains that he
could only write about the earlier period if he had a great
deal of time and was also fully in control of himself. For
those had been years of extreme poverty for him, and
therefore he cannot talk about them casually, after a full
day's work.'
But at last it happened. I had reckoned that he would tell
me nothing, and had decided that the manuscript of this
book was now completed. Indeed my publishers had already
announced its publication date, when suddenly, day after
day, Kawamoto's reminiscences of this most terrible period
began to arrive at my home. He now had the time: a motorcycle had run him down in the main street of Hiroshima, and
he was having a lengthy convalescence in the clinic. Here in
the hospital ward he dared, for the first time, conjure up his
memories of the beginning of the postwar period. Indeed, he
even found the courage to describe to me one of those
shattering incidents which, as he had frequently implied, had
altered the whole course of his life.
It had happened shortly after the Pikadon. Kawamoto, who
was then just sixteen years old, had volunteered for a salvage
operation. Employees from the Saka Electricity Works, who
had watched the destruction of Hiroshima from a safe
distance, began on 7 August to make regular and systematic
visits to the city, daily coming nearer and nearer to its centre,
in search of relatives and the possessions of former workmates. Despite the gruesomeness of it all, these rescue
operations always began in an atmosphere of excited expectation, even of something approaching merriment. Many
people who had survived the catastrophe found themselves,
at that time and despite the horror that met their eyes
everywhere and the sense of tragedy, in the grip of an almost
euphoric sensation of happiness, of high spirits, of well-nigh
hysterical gaiety.
For example, on one occasion the rescue team was driving
in from Saka, in a commercial lorry that bore the pennant of
the firm to which it belonged. They passed a company of
soldiers making their way along in disorder. The exhausted
soldiers, seeing the pennant, thought that this lorry must
belong to some senior officer, leaped to attention, and
saluted. This misapprehension struck the young people on
board the lorry as so hilariously funny that they were doubled
up with laughter for minutes on end.
But what sobered them up at once was 'the atrocious stink
that almost makes a man faint'. They saw corpses 'rolled up
like the monkeys and snakes in a Chinese apothecary's'.
They passed by convicts, recognizable as such owing to their
blue armbands, who were 'fishing corpses out of the river
with instruments that resembled a harpoon. They simply
spirited them, then hoisted them on to a sort of iron roastinggrill, as if they were fish to be cooked.'
On 10 August, the day that was to have such significance in
Kawamoto's life story, the rescue team from Saka had
headed for home earlier than usual. Silently, with heads
lowered, cloths covering their noses - and in some cases
their eyes as well - they were on the way back to their own,
almost undamaged, homes.
It was then that it happened. In order to avoid a puncture
or a blow-out, the lorry had to go especially slowly. Over and
over again it would stop, because rubble, glass, nails or other
obstacles blocked the way. During this hesitant progress
Kawamoto had ample opportunity to observe, in detail, the
faces of the dead that lined the roadside. But that one over
there. Its eyes were opening! They were staring at him! The
body of the 'dead man' remained as rigid as before, there
could be no doubt about that, but its white eyeballs were
slowly rolling from right to left, up and down.
'He's alive, that one's alive over there!' Kawamoto shouted
down from the lorry at the soldiers who were engaged in
clearing the streets of corpses, using their long harpoons for
this purpose.
One or two of the soldiers glanced up. Apparently they
had not understood. Meanwhile, the lorry driver, delighted
to see a stretch of clear road ahead, had stepped on the gas,
and they were gathering speed. 'Don't take that one, don't
burn him. He's alive. That one's alive? shouted Kawamoto
once again. But they had already gone too far, and the men
with the bamboo hooks were out of earshot. They waved
after the lorry, a tired gesture, as though Kawamoto had
shouted a greeting, and then they returned to their gruesome
tasks.
That night Kawamoto was unable to sleep. Without respite
the question tormented him: 'Why did I not jump from the
lorry at once? Maybe I wouldn't have been too late to save a
human life. Did they toss his body, still alive, into ...?' He
dared not complete his thought.
In the middle of the night he awoke a colleague, sleeping
beside him in the dormitory of the Electricity Works. He
shook him, and whispered: 'Tell me, why didn't you tell the
driver to stop? You must have heard me shouting. You must
have all heard. And you saw them lying there, too.'
'Leave me alone,' was the answer he got. *Why not
complain to the B-san14 which dropped the Bomb. That man
lying beside the road - he'd had it, in any event. Shikata
ganai- there's nothing to be done. Go back to sleep, boy.'
'Shiktta ganai,' that's what they all said in Saka. But was
there really nothing to be done, to stop the frightfulness? At
least a beginning should be made. But how? Memories of
what he had seen in Hiroshima and in the emergency hospital
at Saka tormented Ichiro like the demons in the temple
pictures which his mother had once shown him.
She had been a pious Buddhist. Which was why, after her
'Japanese expression for the B-29 bomber.
husband's death, she had returned, accompanied by Ichiro,
then aged ten, from Peru, the land where they had emigrated, to
their old home. 'Those who have done evil in their past life
will be reborn as horses or as oxen,' the mother used to teach
her son. 'Their masters will beat them, and when they are no
longer capable of work they will be slaughtered. Many an evil
spirit also comes back in human shape, but it is then
arranged that his new life on earth will be as cruel and as
filled with work as is that of the beasts of burden.'
Now, as he tossed on his lumpy futon (mattress) unable to
sleep because of the day's events, Kawamoto began to
wonder. 'What crimes can those many, many people have
committed that they should have such unspeakable sufferings
inflicted upon them, over there on the charred patch of
ground where Hiroshima once stood? It can't be that they all
were guilty of evil deeds in some earlier life. And even so,
are we not taught that birds and butterflies are to be regarded
as the reincarnation of good people? If so, why should
thousands of them too have died such a horrible death in the
Pikadon?
Years later, when telling me of these first doubts concerning
the beliefs that he had learned at his mother's knee,
Kawamoto was to add: 'An outsider like yourself will surely
laugh at such religious fantasies. But for me this new
perception came as a great shock. I could not help it. And
then a truly shattering thought occurred to me: if all that I
had hitherto believed was not true, then it followed that
there could be no Supreme Being.'
It was in this state of spiritual turmoil that shortly after the
armistice the young man happened to visit the neighbouring
village of Okugaita. It was there that during the last few
weeks of the war he had undergone a rapid form of military
training. Maybe the head of the school would be able to help
him. 'He greeted me in friendly fashion and we talked about
all sorts of things,' Kawamoto says. 'Finally he advised me to
copy out, twice daily, the Imperial Edict concerning Education.
This task should give me back my certitudes as well as the
courage to go on living. And I actually did this. But after a
month I gave it up, because I had come to realize that it was
of little help to me.'
But without realizing it himself Kawamoto had in fact at
this time found the beginning of the path that he was
henceforth to follow. It had been shown to him by the
example of two people whom he did not know. On one of
the trips to Hiroshima to evacuate the people still there, he
had observed a girl who in most touching fashion was trying
to do something to help those for whom there was no hope.
Later he saw a policeman who with the utmost patience was
feeding moistened bread to a small child whose mother had
collapsed on the roadside. In the midst of the fearsome chaos
all around it seemed to him that these two people were the
only ones doing something which really made sense.
Kawamoto writes:
'The more 1 think back over my experiences, the more
clearly something within myself tells me: "The most
important thing in life is to help all those who are in need
and who suffer." Indeed, it is almost as if a voice spoke
those words aloud to me.'
In the days that followed, Kawamoto tried to dismiss the
memory of those dying people whom he had passed, and
he did this by devoting himself to those so seriously
wounded that they were beyond hope. These hopeless
cases lay in the school and in the kindergarten at Saka.
He reports about this: 'Once I carried a man whose whole
body was one great wound to an emergency hospital a couple
of miles away. There were only a few of us who had
volunteered for this sort of work, and we were often at it all
through the night, by candlelight. To begin with we washed
our hands in ordinary water. Later, when the rumour became
general that the Bomb must have contained poison, we used
to go down to the beach every time. There we would scrub
the dirt from us with salt water and sand, until there was no
longer any trace of the smell of sickness on our bodies.
Because we wanted to live. We had no wish to die miserably,
as we had seen those others do.'
After days without sleep and almost without food the delicately-built youth had become well-nigh incapable of doing
his work properly. His arms were weak, and his hands could
hardly grip anything. On one occasion he dropped a heavy
submarine battery on to his foot, while carrying it from the
Naval Base to the electricity works; and he had to spend
several days in bed as a result. His workmates offered him
no thanks or recognition for the help he was giving voluntarily
to the sick and the dying evacuated from Hiroshima to Saka.
On the contrary, they mocked and teased him: 'Weakling!
Good-for-nothing! You knock-kneed bag of bones! Milksop!
Leave it alone. I'd rather do it on my own. It frightens me
just to watch you try.'
For a while Ichiro put up with their jeers. He did his best
to avoid his workmates. That they might not see his thin
body, covered with a rash ever since the Pikadon, he slipped
into the washroom after the lights had been put out, when
the water was almost cold. He felt himself to be sick, ugly,
wretched, despised by all, and there was no one with whom
he could talk.
But the greater his efforts to remain inconspicuous, the
more they mocked him and tormented him in the factory:
'Why don't you eat a bit more, Kawamoto? Don't you want
to get strong? Why are you so thin?' It went on day after day, at
work and at rest. Out of pride the boy would not tell his
persecutors that he was giving his rations to the sick and that
for weeks now he had been living almost entirely on grasses,
seaweed and crabs' shells that he collected upon the seashore
or on the cliffs. So his only reply was: 'I guess that's the way
I'm made ...'
'Then it's a pity you were ever made at all,' said Engineer
Shitahara, whom Kawamoto had hitherto regarded as one of
his friends.
'Did I ask it to be this way?' Kawamoto shouted at him. 'I
certainly did not.' He felt a senseless fury against his dead
parents for having brought him into this sad, vulgar, loveless,
senseless world. The fury overpowered him.
Kawamoto jumped to his feet. He ran into the dormitory
and pulled something out from under his mattress. It was a
tablet of the dead, bearing the names of his forebears. He
himself had carved and painted it. Now he hurled it, with all
the strength that he still could muster, against the wall. But
the tablet did not break. It was of solid wood and only tore a
hole in the paper that covered the sliding door.
His workmates realized that this time the joke had gone
too far. They came running after Kawamoto, and called to
him: 'Stop, Ichiro, stop. It's madness! There's a divine
punishment for what you're doing!'
'Devil take it!' he shouted back at them. 'I wish I'd never
had any parents. Then you wouldn't be able to push me
about the way you do, and I shouldn't be a burden to
anyone.'
Before they could stop him he had run into the kitchen.
He had lost all trace of self-control. When he came back into
the dormitory, he was carrying an axe. He was wild-eyed and
breathless.
The workers glanced at one another. They were afraid
that he was going to attack them with his axe.
But Kawamoto paid them not the slightest attention. He
stood by the window and began to hack the tablet of the
dead into a thousand pieces.
Then he threw himself down on his mattress, pulled the
blankets up over his head, and fell into a deep and dreamless
sleep.
Ill
A New Beginning (1946-1948)
THE DREAMERS
1
Even before the first, cruel winter 'after the bomb' was over
the city administration of Hiroshima had at last won a
considerable victory over the forces of indifference and
illegality.
Since the Pikadon the water mains had been dry; for, in a
desperate and fruitless effort on that 6th of August to check
the holocaust, the taps had been turned full on in the houses
and allowed to run for hours on end. As a result, water
pressure had fallen so low that finally only the hydrants in
the streets were still working. Their stop-cocks had had to
be forced open during the fire, and the heat was then so
great that the water had shot out close to boiling point or
even in the form of steam. The final reserves had been
squandered, so that in the days that followed the catastrophe
yet another torment was sent to plague the survivors - thirst.
It is true that the reservoirs belonging to the waterworks
were soon refilled, but to re-establish the degree of pressure
needed to send that essential element coursing through the
pipes again it was necessary first to replace the many pipes
broken by the explosion. Engineer units from the Navy and
squads from the Technical Emergency Service, therefore,
rapidly set about this task, digging under the ruins in the
search for breaks which they could then mend. But for every
hole that they plugged by day, two or three more came
into existence each night. For the thirsty population had
meanwhile discovered that by boring holes directly in the
underground network of pipes they could get a few cupfuls
of water at least. So on their own initiative they proceeded to
sink a multitude of such 'springs' in this atomic desert.
There thus came about a highly unequal struggle between
the city authorities and the citizens. The official demand that
the population should, in their own interest, preserve at
least a rudimentary discipline, and should draw their water
exclusively from the few taps that were functioning at widely
scattered points throughout the city, was simply ignored. A
few dozen municipal bureaucrats - who could not now rely
on any police assistance - found themselves face to face with
tens of thousands of tired and thirsty people. The head of
the Water Supply Department, Shinohara, went to see Hamai
and complained: 'It's more than we can cope with.'
In January 1946 the first of the released prisoners of war
began to come home from the South-West Pacific theatre.
Among these, fortunately enough was an energetic civil
engineer by the name of Masao Teranishi. He said that he
was prepared to undertake this particular struggle and told
the poor city fathers, now at their wits' end: 'It's a simple
matter of endurance. We'll just have to see who can hold out
longest.'
Vice-Mayor Shinzo Hamai immediately appointed this
enterprising man Head of the Water Supply and gave him
complete freedom in the choice of his subordinates. There
were plenty of tough young men in search of work among
the returning soldiers, and Teranishi chose the ones who
seemed to him to be the most adventurous. When recruiting
these men, the new Water Chief made no bones about the
dangers that their work would involve. They would have to
work primarily by night in those parts of the city dominated
by the least trustworthy sections of the people, and they
would have to reckon on being resisted with force, for certain
gangster elements had meanwhile organized the sale of water as
a highly lucrative racket and, as a result, would presumably do
their best to hinder the re-establishment of the normal
methods of supply.
So night after night, while the citizens of Hiroshima slept,
the monotonous sound of hammering re-echoed through the
city. It was Teranishi's men, mending the broken pipes.
Since they were armed with knives, and operated in squads
well equipped for self-defence, no one dared to interfere.
First results were visible after only one month; a few drops
of water began to trickle from the taps.
'It's not over yet. You must be patient for a little longer,'
Teranishi advised his fellow-citizens. 'But you now see with
your own eyes the progress we're making. But wait a little,
and every one of us will once again be able to use as much
water as we want.'
And the citizens really began to trust him. Fewer and
fewer became the customers buying 'black* water from the
water merchants or drawing it from the hydrants or from
their private water holes. And in fact one day it suddenly
began to drip, to trickle, to run, to gush through every pipe
and from every tap.
This return of the normal water supply meant much more to
the surviving citizens of Hiroshima than a mere relief from
thirst and dirt. For it showed them that it might again be
possible to live properly and decently on the scorched and
ashen patch of ground where their city had once stood.
Early in January of 1946 a new department was created within
the municipal administration of Hiroshima: its principal task
was to make preparations for the reconstruction. The
departmental chief was Toshio Nakashima, a civil engineer
with experience of town planning. He was assigned a group of
thirty leading citizens of Hiroshima - principally businessmen
and politicians - who constituted a 'Discussion Group for
Problems of Reconstruction'. They had advisory powers only.
This Committee set to work with great enthusiasm and a
plethora of ideas. Apart from the city of Sapporo in Northern
Japan, there had been no single urban community which had
been created according to a plan. Japan's cities had grown
wildly and without any sort of control. As a result not one of
them had proved in any way capable of dealing with such
problems as overcrowding and communications, Narrow,
twisting, attractively old-fashioned alleyways and small private
gardens had been characteristic of the Hiroshima that had
existed before the catastrophe; now it was to be a city of wide
streets, skyscrapers, open parks, and was to aim at winning the
tide of 'Nippon's most modern city'. 'We must transform
our misfortune into a stroke of luck'; such, according to
Shinzo Hamai, was the slogan with which the Reconstruction
Committee set to work.
At their very first meeting profound differences of opinion
became apparent. Before the basic plans for the new city
could be decided upon it was essential that they should have
made up their minds what the primary purpose of this 'new
Hiroshima' was to be. For the city was compelled, as it were,
to change its profession. During the Sino-Japanese War of
1894-95 the Emperor Meiji had set up his headquarters, his
Dai-kon-ei, in this place, and ever since that date war had
been Hiroshima's principal source of income. The RussoJapanese War, the 'China incident' and finally the 'Greater
East-Asian* War of 1941 had all brought the city an increase
both of population and of wealth. A succession of arsenals,
supply depots, barracks, parade grounds and munitions factories had come into existence. Now, after total defeat and
disarmament, the question arose as to what Hiroshima would
live on in future.
Describing these fundamental debates, Hamai says: 'One
member of the Committee believed that the city's future lay in
tourism, and he found a considerable amount of support for
this view. Others were of the opinion that Hiroshima
should become primarily an administrative centre, a town of
Government offices and training establishments. This proposal met with no applause. What is interesting is that in the
end all the members of the Committee agreed on one thing: a
city of peace and culture must arise here.'
Some Committee members produced ideas that can only
be described as fantastic. They dreamed, for example, of a
'Venice of the East'; canals were to be dug between the
rivers, 'Bridges of Sighs' built, even gondoliers imported
from Italy, with riverside or floating restaurants and much
else as well. Others envisaged a Japanese Monte Carlo, with
casinos, yacht basins and waterside promenades. The railway
station was moved - on paper, naturally - from the outskirts
to the centre of the city. There was talk of spacious boulevards, of enlarging the university by building a library to
specialize in problems of peace. Someone suggested that
Picasso be asked to preside over an international artists'
colony for which art galleries of a suitable size and number
would be provided.
This planning fever, originally limited to the official department concerned with such matters, soon spread throughout
the entire city. It assumed epidemic proportions. 'Everything
must start anew,!' exclaimed the young people back from the
war. Hiroshima, the symbol of atomic war, was to become a
beacon whose rays would spread across the entire world.
When, the Discussion Committee for Reconstruction met,
one question of primary importance arose immediately.
Should the accursed, poisoned, burned soil on which
Hiroshima had once stood, and which was constantly
threatened by the danger of floods, be abandoned forever? In
fact should the new Hiroshima be built elsewhere? But new
buildings even if most of these were mere huts - were already
springing up on all sides, and the opponents of this radical
resettlement plan advanced this fact as a sort of people's protest
against it. Also an actuarial summary of the situation rapidly
made plain that the only partly damaged 'infra-structure' of the
city (the labyrinth of pipes, wires and so forth beneath the
streets) was still so valuable, and its replacement at postwar
prices would be so costly, that the city would not afford simply
to abandon it.
These debates were still in progress when something
happened that gave new courage even to those people who
doubted whether Hiroshima could ever rise again.
To the south of the Town Hall there stood a pair of
smoke-blackened cherry trees. The municipal administration
had saved them from the fate that had befallen all the other
trees of Hiroshima. They had in fact not been burned as fuel
during that first, bitter winter.
They stood there, hideous mementoes of what had
happened, their painfully twisted and tortured branches
an unforgettable reminder of the great past. Shinzo Hamai
would glance repeatedly out of his office window at these
two survivors. In their agonized convulsions they seemed to
him, particularly at night, to stand there like a couple of ghosts.
Then, one morning in April 1946, the Vice-Mayor looked
up from the papers that lay so thick upon his desk. He gazed
for a long time. For what met his eyes was a sight he had
scarcely hoped ever to see again. He ran down the stairs as
fast as his legs would carry him, and only now, when he was
standing immediately beneath the branches of the trees,
could he be sure that his eyes had not deceived him. The
blackness of the branches was dappled with the brilliant
white of cherry buds opening into blossom.
In the days that followed, hundreds of people made a
pilgrimage to the two sad cherry trees that had, overnight,
come to life once again. Only now did they begin to believe
that their city was not condemned to remain an atomic desert
for close on one hundred years.
Sachio Kano is an immigrant from Hiroshima whom I met in
one of those endless grey suburbs that surrounded Chicago.
When he recalls that first spring after the defeat in his home
town the air of depression leaves him, his face lights up and
he is vivacious and gay:
'In those days we really thought that the world had been
born anew, and that we people of twenty or so might
henceforth live in this just, free, better, more beautiful world.
We had plenty of optimism and plenty of words in which to
express it. That was the way we used to talk when we met in
the Musica tea-room, on Enko Bashi Street, amidst a decor
of Swiss chalets, over weak coffee or even weaker cups of
tea, and to the accompaniment of endless classical music
played on the phonograph. (Somehow or other the Chinese
proprietor had managed to save his really first-class collection of
records.) Those marvellous, endless conversations, how well
I remember it all.
'Like most of my contemporaries, I had only recently been
discharged from the forces. I had been trained as a "oneman torpedo" and that was pretty well all I knew. So now I
had to set about looking for a career. I found one quite by
chance. In one of the newspapers, I came upon an article by
Hata, the poet. He was complaining that in Hiroshima, since
the death of the Sakuratai Company in the atomic explosion,
there had been no theatre at all. I had always dreamed of
becoming an actor. So now I went to see him, and with his
help I started a company called the Porte-Manteau Group,
because our ambitions did not go beyond serving as "coathangers" for the ideas of modern, and particularly of foreign,
dramatists.'
It did not take long to collect sufficient actors and actresses to
form this group. Money for clothes, make-up, scripts and
advertising was also finally available, though this was come
by in a somewhat unusual fashion. A member of the group
happened to discover that the municipal administration was
subsidizing new firms. In an attempt to get business going
again, each such firm was given a special allotment of rice
wine, normally rationed in the strictest fashion. It should be
explained that a few bottles of sake form part of the essential
inventory of any Japanese business concern.
Owing to their extreme rarity these bottles of sake could be
sold on the black market for sums many times in excess of
their nominal value. So before they even staged a play the
young actors 'created' a few dummy firms with fine-sounding
names. These only 'ran' until the sake ration had been
received, and passed on to the black market. The fine, new
world wanted a drink too ...
They had got it into their heads only to produce Western
plays, thus underlining their break with the traditions of 'Old
Japan'. They rehearsed Ibsen's Ghosts at Hata's house, not
far from Hiroshima. In the waiting-room of Hiroshima
station, only partly repaired since the bombing, and in front
of several hundred enthusiastic and enraptured people, they
enacted this play that deals with the problem of inherited
disease, a very real problem for the people of Hiroshima,
even though here shown in the comparatively idyllic circumstances of the pre-atomic nineteenth century.
As with all such groups, the actual productions that
were staged were of less importance than the feelings of
comradeship derived from rehearsing and acting together.
The young people who formed this circle were among the
first in Hiroshima to associate in a hitherto unknown, free
and 'Western' manner. It became possible, for example, for
unmarried young men and girls to meet without complicated
subterfuges and stratagems. Although the 'emancipation of
women' had been ordered from on high, women played a
very subordinate role in the provincial city of Hiroshima.
With these young people this was no longer the case. At first
only one girl had dared join the company, and plays with an
all-male, or almost all-male, cast had therefore to be found,
for the young actors would have regarded it as contrary to
their programme of 'modernization' if young men had played
female parts, as was customary in the traditional Japanese
theatre.
Bit by bit, however, other girls gained sufficient confidence
to join the little company.
'There was one occasion when the part required that a
young girl, who had only recently joined the company, should
appear in a sleeveless dress,' Sachio Kano remembers. 'She
started by producing every possible argument against wearing
such a dress. But finally she gave in to the producer, burst
into tears and went away to change. When we saw her on the
rehearsal stage, we understood and felt deeply ashamed. Her
arm was hideously scarred by a huge atomic cheloid. "Apart
from my doctor, I've never dared show it to anyone," she
said, still sobbing. "But you ... you're all my friends."
'She became our best actress. But only when she was with
us did she feel healthy, normal and free again.'
What subsequently happened was perhaps inevitable. Evilminded people maintained that Sachio Kano was only interested in chasing the girls and those rehearsals were the
equivalent of orgies. It was also rumoured that he introduced
Communists into the company, and was busy making
propaganda.
'Both statements were slanders,' Kano insisted. 'We acted
Lord Dunsany, Elmer Rice, Synge, Dickens. Are they supposed to be bolsheviks? No, the truth is that we offended the
"old people". As you know, I myself emigrated from Japan
when I realized - 1950 or thereabouts - that my hopes of a
brave new world were coming to nothing, and that the men
in charge were almost identical with the people who had
been running Japan before the war.'
I left him at the dirty-white gateway of a meat-packing
factory in one of Chicago's dismal 'coloured quarters'. He
earns now just enough money for himself and his family to
be able to visit the theatrical section of the Arts Institute in
the evening. So at least a fragment of his dream has not
faded away.
Among those who frequented the Musica tea-room during
that first, hope-filled spring after the war there was a thin,
unhealthy-looking poet by the name of Sankichi Toge, who
was soon to -be the centre of a whole new literary movement.
From a political and artistic point of view he often seemed, to
the adherents of this movement, too moderate, but they
detected in him a moral strength and an artistic incorruptibility which elevated him far above the rank of ordinary
propaganda writers. Therefore, in July 1946, he was elected
chairman of the Seinen Bunka Kenmei (Assembly for Young
Culture), a strongly left-wing organization to which most of
the surviving artists and authors of Hiroshima belonged.
Toge had been born in February 1917. He came of a
family which for many years had been prominent in the fight
against Japanese militarism. His elder brothers and sisters
had worked in the illegal trade unions and anti-war organizations. The younger of his two brothers had fallen into the
hands of the police and had been tortured to death. Since
reaching manhood Sankichi had suffered from a malady of
the lungs, which meant that he was frequently bed-ridden. In
hospital he had developed an interest in Christianity, and in
1943, that is to say in the middle of the war, at a period
when it was dangerous to show such an interest in ideas that
'smelt of butter' (i.e. Western ideas), he had had himself
secretly baptized.
The frightful experiences of the Pikadon gave a new
meaning to the poet's work. He tried to express the unspeakable experiences through which he had passed. Furthermore
he was a patient, clever adviser of other young writers of
talent. He urged them not merely to describe perfected,
ceremonious moments in their verses, as was done in traditional Japanese poetry, but to find a 'new beauty' in the
bustle and fullness of contemporary life.
Toge was of the opinion that every human being contained
within himself a poet or a painter. He therefore urged his
fellow-citizens to write 'poems of everyday life', for to every
man is given the longing for artistic form. And Kaoru Ogura
has told me that in postwar Hiroshima it really happened:
hospital orderlies, patients, factory workers, in brief- human
beings from every class of society - began to write. In verses
without any strict form and without rhyme these simple
people tried to describe, and so to discover anew, their daily
life.
To obtain the basic necessities of life and also as a sort of
demonstration to prove 'the survival of God's beauty amidst
the ugliness of destruction wrought by human pride', in the
autumn of 1945 Toge opened Hiroshima's first flower shop. It
was called Midori (Green). In August 1946 he also opened the
first postwar bookshop.
In this bookshop, which he called Hakuyo Shobe (The
White Water Willow), discussions about certain writers' latest
work would often go on until the early hours of the morning.
One book that caused particular excitement at that time was
the diary of young Shinoe Shoda, whose father had been one
of Hiroshima's leading armament manufacturers. This small
volume, entitled Sange (Remorse), was a confession of family
guilt in the war that had ended with that family's destruction
in the atomic disaster. Another book which attracted a great
deal of attention was Natsu no hana (The Flower of One
Summer), certainly the very first novel about the Pikadon.
Tamiki Hara, a writer who had moved to Hiroshima from
Tokyo during the war, had dedicated this novel to his wife,
killed in the explosion. Later, in March of 1951, fearing that
the Korean War would develop into another atomic war, the
author committed suicide.
For the survivors the most impressive of the documentary
reports about the catastrophe which they had lived through
seemed even in these early days to be The City of the Dead by
Yoko Ohta. When Tokyo was devastated by a napalmbombing in June 1945, the authoress of this book had fled to
Hiroshima, in the hope of finding safety there. Caught by the
atom bomb, she had spent three days and nights in the
open, surrounded by corpses, and had entered hospital with
symptoms of the 'radiation sickness'. For one month Mrs
Ohta lingered between life and death. In October and
November 1945, while still sick in bed, she wrote down her
experiences. The book, however, could not be printed at
once, for the Occupation Authorities - referring to Paragraph 3
of MacArthur's press law - declared its publication to be
'contrary to their interests'. For Mrs Ohta had said that the
'self-destruction of humanity' which she had been compelled
to witness in Hiroshima had not in fact begun with the
explosion of the atomic bomb, but much earlier, with its
'invention and creation'.15
Of the many poems then written about Hiroshima, one
touched particularly deep and powerful chords. It appeared
in March 1946, in a collection of poems entitled Chugoku
Bunka (The Culture of Chugoku). The poetess, Sadako
Kurihara, describes in particularly impressive fashion the
'voice of hope in the midst of despair':
REBIRTH
Through the deep cellar, where only shadows live,
Shadows of the living and the dead, a cry breaks,
15
By various stratagems the censor of the Occupying Powers even
prevented die publication of a Japanese edition of John Hersey's famous
Hiroshima, which originally appeared in The New Yorker in September 1946,
but which was not allowed to be printed in Japanese until March of 1949.
Almost all works by Japanese authors dealing with Hiroshima were originally
censored: only after lengthy appeals and much protest were they finally
allowed to be published. But MacArthur's headquarters refused to .give way in
the matter of die documentary film made in August and September of
1945 by the Nichiei Film Production Co. in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The
fifteen reels of negative were seized in February 1946. Even lengths of film
that had been taken out of these in the cutting-room had to be handed over.
But the producers had secretly made a copy, which they had buried, risking
thereby the most severe punishment.
A cry of pain through darkness,
No cry of joy, yet a consolation,
Drowning the thousand other cries that still
Re-echo shrilly through their heads,
An answer comes. From among those shadows
'Cry as you will, woman,' comes the answer.
'I know the way. In such hours of heaviness
It was my daily task to be with you
Up there.'
And this too helped: Thus, unseen, a new life
came, Born of darkness. Out of darkness Into light,
for surely he Was destined for the light. Yet those
who helped him then, The consolers and the helpers,
might themselves Never again see light. Before the
first Gleam could reach into their cellar, they Had
been forever snuffed, like candles.
Yoko Ohta told me that in the spring of 1946, when one of
her friends had outlined to her one of those many fanciful
projects which were then in the air, she had asked the
sensible question: *And where is the money coming from?'
Mrs Ohta is a Marxist. But Shigajiro Matsuda, director of
the motor-cycle factory Toyo Kogyo and one of Hiroshima's
leading industrialists, was in the habit of asking precisely the
same question of the 'dreamers' who abounded in those days.
At the long and animated meetings of the Reconstruction
Committee he tried to inject a note of economic reality into
the debates by repeating almost ad nauseam: 'These are
castles in the air. Magnificent though your plans may be on
paper, the question we must answer first of all is this: what
financial sources can we draw upon? Only when that question
has been answered will we know what we can actually
undertake.'
One of this industrialist's proposals was that the city should
buy up as many plots of land, and the ruins that covered
them, as possible - while property values were still low. Once
reconstruction had begun the value of land was bound to go
up, and the resultant profits might then well be used to
finance costly communal projects.
But even to do this an initial capital was needed, and the
coffers of the city administration were quite empty. For the
time being there could be no question of borrowing from the
banks or from industry. They would understandably prefer to
invest their capital, which was scant)' enough, in safer
reconstruction projects than an atom-devastated city. In the
cautious financial circles of Tokyo the rumour that the soil of
Hiroshima was 'poisoned', and would probably remain so for
several generations, was still current. This was enough to
make those circles even more cautious than usual, and
extremely reluctant to grant credits.
What about the Government? The Mayor, Kihara, the
chairman of the city council, Yamamoto, and a delegation of
councillors went to Tokyo for the purpose of obtaining
special credits for the reconstruction of their city. The answer
they received was not encouraging. 'At this moment of history
the entire nation is passing through a serious financial crisis.
One hundred and twenty of our towns are in ashes as the
result of enemy air attacks. Hiroshima cannot ask for, nor
expect, specially favourable treatment merely because the
disaster there was caused by an atomic bomb rather than by
incendiary bombs.'
So the only remaining hope was the Americans. They
seemed to be touched on a particularly sensitive spot whenever Hiroshima was mentioned.
Already, on the occasion of a visit by foreign journalists in
February 1946, Mayor Kihara appeared to be aiming at this
spot when he said: 'This entire tragedy was brought upon us
by the Americans. Therefore the United States should devote
very special attention to the reconstruction of Hiroshima.'
To which one American journalist had replied angrily:
'Do you happen to know what the Japanese Army did in
Manila and Nanking?'
'I don't,' answered Kihara.
'What were you doing during the war?' the cross-examination went on.
'I was a member of the Upper House.'
'It is quite impossible that any man occupying such a
position should have no inkling of these matters/ a reporter
began. And, from then on, the conversation was about the
atrocities that the Japanese troops had committed and not, as
the Mayor had hoped, about the reconstruction of Hiroshima.
In arguing about the relative vileness of yesterday's crimes,
today's needs were forgotten.
Despite this initial failure, Mayor Kihara decided, after
the Japanese authorities had refused a special subsidy in the
summer of 1946, to try his luck with the Americans once
again. But on this occasion he adopted subtler tactics. He
did not immediately ask for money, but only for advice,
confident that if the" advice were given the money would
surely follow. The Americans sent him as adviser a young
lieutenant by the name of Montgomery, whose proposals, as
Shinzo Hamai recalls, were 'at least always quite innocuous.
He examined our projects in detail, and then pronounced
them first-rate.'
But Lieutenant Montgomery had had only limited practical
experience, while the influence that he could exert on Allied
Headquarters, that prime source of dollars, was disappointingly small. Nor did he remain for long in Hiroshima. But
for years he sent a telegram each year, on 6 August. Even
today everyone remembers him with affection, because he
spoke fluent Japanese and was an unobtrusive, unpretentious
man; however, it must be admitted that he was of little
practical help.
He was replaced by another foreign adviser on reconstruction, the Australian Major S. A. Jarvis. This man set about
his job with real earnestness, for he was aware that he was
confronted with a very large task. His plans for the 'new
Hiroshima' were even more grandiose - if that were possible than the ideas advanced at the meetings of the Reconstruction
Committee, and he fought fiercely against those plans for
compromise which had meanwhile been put forward by the
municipal administration, and which would retain from the
large-scale town-planning of the early months little more
than a projected park and a single boulevard one hundred
yards wide.
There was no effort that Major Jarvis did not make in his
fight to ensure that this unique opportunity for a model
rebuilding of Hiroshima should not be wasted. Not only did
he confer with the responsible authorities at MacArthur's
headquarters, but he even obtained an audience with the
Japanese Emperor's brother, Prince Takamatsu, with whom
he pleaded for special financial assistance for Hiroshima. It
was all in vain. The Japanese were compelled to count their
pennies, while certain Allied politicians felt that any special
help for Hiroshima would imply an indebtedness, perhaps
even an admission of guilt, towards the city. The Japanese
could not, the Allies would not, do anything.
Disappointed, his health broken, the Australian at last sent
in his resignation. In a farewell letter addressed to the city
administration he expressed his regret:
'I have caused the Mayor a great deal of trouble, because I
desired the impossible. But while travelling through Japan I
had noticed that there is not one single city which is built
according to the basic principles of town-planning, and so I
told myself that here, on a somewhat smaller but nevertheless
ideal scale, this should now be attempted. In time to come it
would not only be your town's citizens who would have
profited from this, but other towns as well, for which yours
would have served as a model. But the more I came to know
about conditions in Japan, the plainer it became to me how
difficult it would be to carry out such an undertaking. I only
hope that I will not be misunderstood, for my intentions
were honourable.'
Meanwhile, the provisional 'uncontrolled' rebuilding was
going on apace. The first schools had been reopened - and
this was the city fathers' chief concern, even if, to begin with,
the children had to have half their lessons in the open air, in
the so-called 'Blue Sky Schools'. Streets were cleared of
rubble and resurfaced. A few fresh, green trees were even
imported into the shadeless city from the surrounding
countryside. Without inquiring too closely into property rights
or paying too much attention to the city administration's
blueprints, which laid down a minimum street width of one
hundred and twenty feet, the homeless built themselves
house after house. First a post would be driven into the
chosen plot, and to this would be nailed a board bearing
the future householder's name, electrical cables would be
connected, only the most conscientious citizens bothering
first to obtain the permission of the Electricity Workers; and
in three or four weeks yet another family had a roof over its
head. A reporter writing for the American Army paper, Stars
and Stripes, may well have found the right comparison when
he described the Hiroshima of 1946, that city of the Far
East, as resembling some mining town in the Far West
during the Gold Rush period.
The Japanese Government had explicitly forbidden population movements into those cities which had been particularly
damaged by the war. This however did not prevent strangers
who happened to be in Hiroshima from settling there. Nor
did it stop others from coming into the city with the returning
evacuees or those who had fled elsewhere. Even if the
authorities had had the heart to enforce these regulations,
they lacked the necessary means. These new settlers were in
most cases men, women and children who had now been
uprooted for the second time; having gone overseas to
colonize the Japanese-controlled territories, the defeat had
now compelled them to come home again. As the pioneers of
the Japanese 'new Asia' they had been the representatives of a
self-conscious and often arrogant ruling class in Korea,
China, Manchuria, Indochina, Indonesia, Burma, Formosa
and Malaya, where they had lived like princes. Now utterly
depressed and discouraged, after weeks of running the
gauntlet amidst the foreign populations whom they had so
recently oppressed, they disembarked at Hiroshima's port,
Ujina, that same port with its 'Hall of Triumph' from which a
few years ago the soldiers of Nippon had set sail to conquer an
empire overseas.
They were in most cases penniless, driven from their
homes with nothing, exhausted by hunger marches or by
their time in a 'reception camp’, frequently broken in health.
Having got as far as Hiroshima they went no farther. Here
they felt more at home than they would elsewhere, for the
survivors of the Pikadon had emerged from the war as poor,
as sick, and as wretched as themselves. 'In Hiroshima nobody
looks down on us,' remarked one of these new citizens, when
asked to explain why they should have chosen to settle in this
most war-damaged of all the Japanese cities - a choice that
at first glance seemed a strange one. Others said, with a
frankness verging on brutality: 'Before the war four hundred
thousand people found living space here. Only a hundred
and fifty thousand of them still exist, so there's bound to be
room for us.'
Similar calculations attracted ambitious men, hoping for
success, from the Osaka district to Hiroshima. The citizens
of that great sea port are known throughout Japan for their
business acumen. It is said that when an Osaka businessman
trips and falls, he will certainly have pulled off a deal before
he gets to his feet again. Now they reckoned, quite correctly,
that in a place so totally destroyed as was Hiroshima a
shrewd operator could surely amass a fortune in a very short
space of time.
Soon many of these hard-working, ambitious and highspirited settlers achieved positions superior to those of the
original citizens of Hiroshima. Even before the war the
inhabitants of the Chugoku region had been regarded as
somewhat slower, more stolid and less enterprising than were
the men from the metropolitan centre of Japan. To this was
now added the fact that even one whole year after the
Pikadon the majority of the survivors were still suffering, to a
greater or lesser degree, from the after-effects of shock,
deliberately attributable to the extraordinary experience
through which they had passed, and simply lacked the
strength to compete with the tough and resourceful newcomers on equal terms. As a leading article in the Chugoku
Shimbun put it at the time, months after the catastrophe they
were still 'somewhat deafened'.
There were thus two classes of persons living in Hiroshima.
There were the 'survivors', who, to begin with, constituted
the majority of the population, but who were soon only half,
then a third, and finally only amounted to one in five of
Hiroshima's inhabitants. And on the other hand there were
the 'new people' steadily on the increase both in importance
and in numbers. The result of this was conflict, which, while
seldom openly in evidence, nevertheless came to constitute
an integral part of the 'new Hiroshima'.
There was one incident, however, which caused a public
outcry. One 'new man' from Osaka went so far as to attempt
to acquire the whole business of selling atom-bomb souvenirs,
and thereby threatened to deprive a real victim of 6 August
of his livelihood, a man named Kikkawa whose very body
bore the burn-scars of that day.
A hateful public slinging match ensued. The 'intruder'
from Osaka asked sarcastically by what right his competitor
should describe himself, as he did in his advertisements, as
Atom-bomb Victim No. 1. Finally this business struggle,
fought in the very shadow of the 'Atom Dome', reached such
proportions that a bitter jest went the rounds of Hiroshima:
'What those two would really like, if they could, would be to
atom-bomb one another.'
BAMBOO-SHOOT EXISTENCE
1
Pilots and air-crews who flew over Hiroshima during the
first six months that followed the dropping of the atom bomb
tell of having experienced a deep and choking sensation of
guilt at the sight of the huge, dirty, grey-and-rusty brown
stain that disfigured the green landscape of fields and forest.
By the spring and summer of 1946, however, Hiroshima was
itself green once again. As seen from the air it now resembled a
single, gigantic market garden. Wherever a patch of ground
remained open, this was rapidly ploughed. Opposite the
Town Hall corn sprang up, and beneath the shadow of the
'Atomic Dome', in whose rusty ruins swallows were nesting,
there was a crop of potatoes, tomatoes and cabbages. That
first harvest was a meagre one, and this was ascribed to the
belief that the radiation which followed the bombing had
exterminated the bacteria in the soil. On the other hand the
rice crop was more abundant than usual, and certain vegetables assumed so gigantic a size that people stared at them
in wonderment. Such wonderment, it must be admitted,
contained a greater element of worry than of joy.
These auxiliary crops proved, however, quite inadequate
to provide even half the food needed to feed the population
of Hiroshima, which was once again approaching the two
hundred thousand mark. The reserve stocks that had survived
the war had meanwhile been exhausted, and almost the only
food to be obtained with ration cards was a sort of meal
made of potato leaves and 'railway grass'. 'The housewives,'
reported the Chugoku Shimbun, 'maintain that all they can do
with this stuff is to feed it to then- rabbits. But they only say
that in public. In truth, in the privacy of their houses, they
make all sorts of "grass cakes" out of this bitter-tasting
powder.'
Any person in those days who still had any possessions
moved them out, bit by bit, into the country, where they were
traded for food. A poetic phrase had been invented to
describe this prosaic necessity, a phrase which became current during this period of living hand-to-mouth: takenokoseikatsu, 'bamboo-shoot existence'. For the heart of the young
bamboo consists of many delicate leaves laid one close above
the other, and they are eaten as a European eats an artichoke,
leaf by leaf, until at last there is nothing left at all.
At this period in Japan, as in war-torn Europe in the
immediate postwar months, the houses of the peasants were
soon crammed to the roof with valuables and money. The
mistrustful country folk insisted on cash payments and locked
the banknotes away in their strong-boxes. In these days there
were celebrations and festivities in the villages, known as
Issaku-Iwai) or 'one foot feasts'. On such occasions the
peasants would make towers of their banknotes, which often
reached a height of a foot or more; they would then gloat
over their new wealth.
Saka, the suburb of Hiroshima where Ichiro Kawamoto
lived, was half town and half country. Many of the men who
worked for the Electrical Company had a secondary job as
well, working on the land. Thus Kawamoto was in a position
to observe precisely how the farm produce would be quickly
hidden away when the controllers responsible for proper
delivery and distribution were in the vicinity, and how it
would be brought forth again with equal speed when the
Katsugiya - the representatives of the black-market operators
in the city - came to call.
It is true that the Americans did try to help, and issued
yellow corn meal from their own supply stores, a form of
food, incidentally, hitherto unknown to the Japanese; but
these auxiliary supplies were totally inadequate to the need.
Not only in Tokyo and Osaka, but also in Hiroshima did the
May Day festivities of 1946 - celebrations which had been
forbidden for years by the Japanese military regime and
which were now resumed for the first time - take the form of
hunger demonstrations. On a banner made from an old black
air-raid curtain there was to be seen, for all to read, in black
and white: WE STARVE! The week-end holiday, another
innovation of the newly-established democracy, had to be
spent by most workers at this time searching for weeds and
edible barks, or else doing heavy manual arubeit for some
peasant in exchange for a few handfuls of rice.
The Occupation Authorities made a demand of Shinzo
Hamai: in his capacity as a senior official he should set a
good example to the other civil servants and should openly
announce that from now on he would never again buy 'black
rice'. He accepted this order and for a few weeks he and his
wife endured the greatest privation in consequence. At last,
however, he was compelled to abandon this display of civic
virtue and turn to the black market once again. There was
also a story in the papers at that time about a judge who
found himself faced with the dilemma of either breaking the
law in order to eat or of slowly starving to death: the only
solution that he could find to this problem was to commit
suicide, which he did.
It was said that smoking stilled the pangs of hunger, so
countless 'cigarettes' were rolled in pieces of newspaper. In
order to forget their miseries and misfortunes most people
got drunk whenever they could. In their choice of alcoholic
drink many of them were completely careless. They even
drank industrial alcohol. Numerous drinkers died in consequence, while others went blind. And Kawamoto tells me
that persons so blinded would maintain they had lost their
eyesight in the atomic bombardment, with the result that
those people who had really been blinded by the Pikadon
were frequently not believed - and dismissed and insulted as
lying drunkards. Hiropon became very popular. This was a
drug that simultaneously killed appetite and induced a sensation of great well-being and energy. It had been issued to
Kamikaze pilots before their death-flights, as well as to troops
about to take pan in an assault landing. The dope-peddlers
had got hold of it by plundering the old supply depots.
At the Saka Electricity Works during this period drinking
bouts were also the daily custom. Rice wine and whisky
being only rarely available here, they made do with a milkylooking, sour-smelling brew made of water and fermented
potato peelings.
Kawamoto had hitherto never participated in one of these
drunken evenings. But at last he could no longer resist the
pressing invitation of his workmates nor stand up to their
teasing. A bowlful of the stuff was held under his nose, and
they encouraged him with these words:
'Come on, boy, you must build up your strength. Just try a
swallow!'
They stood around him, five or six of them, and watched
him as, with eyes tight shut, he forced down the foul-tasting
brew.
'He's drinking it! At last! He's made it!' they were all
shouting together. 'Like the taste, boy? Warms you up, what?'
Kawamoto shook his head:
'It's sour. Did you make it properly? There's something
wrong with it.'
The others roared with laughter. 'That's how potato spirit
tastes. That's all. Come on, have some more!'
It was with a splitting headache that Ichiro lay down to
sleep that night, swearing that he would never drink again.
And next morning he was as hungry as before.
In order to get over the empty feeling in his stomach,
Kawamoto's first action in getting up was to drink a glass of
water. Then he ran down to the drugstore, where they were
already waiting for him. In order to earn a little extra money,
and then be able to buy a little extra food, he had taken on
the job of delivering newspapers before starting his normal
day's work.
It was a hard job, for most of the farms to which he had to
deliver the papers lay on hilltops or amidst fields. When it
was raining Ichiro would be soaked to the skin, for he did
not own an umbrella. Often the newspapers that were not
printed locally would fail to arrive on time, owing to a railway
accident or breakdown of the electric current. Then he would
have to do the whole exhausting round a second time, after his
day's work.
By that time it would usually be too late for him to travel
into Hiroshima and spend the money he had earned on rice
cakes in the black market near the railway station. So Ichiro
would go back to bed even hungrier than when he had got
up, his stomach rumbling emptily after the hard day's work.
There was one advantage to his arubett as a newsboy: it
allowed Kawamoto to quench his parching intellectual thirst,
for he could read the papers to his heart's content.
'I would sit down under a tree in which the summer
cicadas were singing, and read ...' So runs a sentence in his
diary, where he faithfully described the political and social
developments of the immediate postwar years.
Noteworthy are the entries dated 1946 in which he
describes how the initial admiration for the Americans was
slowly turning to scepticism. He observes incidents in which
American soldiers had 'interfered' with civilians; he comments critically on the Occupying Power's increasing tendency to intervene against the right to strike; he records the
emergence of 'anti-Americanism' in his own circle. But
Kawamoto continued himself to be friendly disposed towards
the Americans. He even tried to learn English by correspondence course. A certain Professor Matsumoto visited Saka, to
lecture on American institutions, and Kawamoto went to see
him with the request that the Professor help him immigrate to
the United States. The lecturer, however, could offer him no
help at all, for the American immigration authorities
offered only a minute quota of immigration permits to
'Asiatics'. By way of consolation, however, he sent the boy a
few copies of the Reader's Digest.
When the next winter came, Kawamoto tried to obtain
work with the Army of Occupation. The direct reason for his
taking this decision was the loss of his fitter's wrench, which
he carried day and night, attached to his belt. The tool,
however, had never been his property, but only a loan. It
belonged to the firm, and the young man did not dare face
his employers again until he had found it, for in the conditions
then prevailing a wrench was an almost irreplaceable treasure.
So Kawamoto reported sick and began an intensive search
for the valuable object he had lost. But though he retraced
all his steps of the previous day, the wrench was nowhere to
be found. It had probably been stolen, and had made its way
to the black market long ago.
There's only one thing to do now,' Ichiro said to himself. 'I
must find another job, one where I can earn enough
money to replace the wrench. Until I have done that, I can't
possibly face my workmates.' So next morning he reported
sick again and took the train to Kure. He knew from his
reading of the newspapers that the Americans were constantly
advertising for men to work in their 'Air Force Camp' at
Hiro.
The young Japanese had no sooner passed through the
gates of the military installation than he found himself in a
world that was to him both new and strange: jeeps and cars
bearing a white star, barbed wire, pin-up girls, and notices in a
foreign language. Although his train journey had taken him
only a few miles, it was as though he had arrived far, far
from his home.
The new arrival was directed to the Employment Office,
where he was first of all given a questionnaire, which he was
told to fill in exactly. 'Then I asked about my quarters,'
Kawamoto remembers, 'and I was told that I would be given a
bed in the camp, but that I must bring my own bedding.
When I heard that, my resolution began to weaken. All I
possessed was my thin Futon, which was almost in rags and
which I'd left behind in Saka. I couldn't bring that here. But
without bedding I'd surely be unable to sleep for cold in
these draughty barracks, even if I kept all my clothes on ...
'Well, there you are, the dream's over. That's what I said
to myself, and I felt deeply disappointed. All the same I hung
about a bit longer, not knowing quite what to do, watching
the others filling in their questionnaires, and the men in
uniform who took them away ... After I'd been waiting for
half an hour, or maybe an hour, it began to snow outside. A
middle-aged Japanese soldier, who maintained that he had
served in Manchuria, was the first to pass the "examination".
They also took on another big, strong, lad of about twenty.
Another young man was standing by, shifting uneasily
from one foot to the other. He must, Ichiro reckoned, be
about two years older than himself. He found this stranger
sympathetic at first glance. He wore no hat to hide his black
unruly hair, and there were holes around the elbows of his
jacket. He too seemed undecided as to whether he should
continue to await the Americans' decision or should leave at
once. Suddenly he lost patience. He turned sharply on his
heel and stamped out, into the whirling snow, heading for
the railway station. Without knowing precisely why he did so,
Ichiro followed him, at a distance of some thirty yards.
The long winter rains and now the damp snow had quite
destroyed the surface of the road along which they were
walking. Only where the tyres of the jeeps and army trucks
constantly passed had the earth been pressed down to form
two smooth ribbons. Along one of these narrow paths Mojimoji-san, or Gollywog, as Kawamoto called the other man in
his mind, was carefully picking his way. And he was doing
this so skilfully that his feet remained both dry and clean
despite his dilapidated footwear. 'He knows his way about,'
Ichiro said to himself, and followed in his footsteps.
There was a wait of almost two hours before the next train
would be leaving Hiro for Kure and Hiroshima. There were
five of them seated in the icy, empty waiting-room, three
women who were too tired or too hungry even to gossip
together, and the two young men. Kawamoto would willingly
have entered into conversation with his contemporary, but he
was too shy to address him without a pretext. The tall young
man was attempting to warm his hands by thrusting them
into the sleeves of his shiny, threadbare jacket. 'Should I
lend him my fitter's gloves?' Ichiro wondered. He was already
tugging at one of them, with the intention of offering it to the
stranger, a wordless gesture of incipient friendship. But the
other's head was sunken, his eyes on the ground, and when
he looked up again Kawamoto had lost the courage to repeat
his shy offer.
So they sat there in silence, staring out at the whirling grey
snow, at the millions of white flakes. Each flake, alone and
separate from its fellows, fell upon the hard, cold ground.
At last the train arrived. It was pretty full. Ichiro sat down
on one of the two unoccupied seats in the coach. He could
not help looking at 'Gollywog' and he watched him burrowing
deep in his pockets, from which he withdrew forth first one
banknote, then another, and proceeded to compare the two
of them with a sceptical grimace. Kawamoto gave him a
sympathetic smile of understanding. He knew that the other
young man was amusing himself by examining the design of
the new ten-yen notes issued by the Americans. On each of
these there was reproduced the Imperial chrysanthemum
emblem, encircled with an ornamental design which, according
to many Japanese, resembled a prisoner's chains; they also
bore a picture of the Diet Building within a frame that was
said to look like a prison window. There were even
persons who were reluctant to accept these notes, on the
ground that they regarded them as a symbol of "Japan's
enslavement'. Kawamoto was on the point of opening a
conversation on this subject when all of a sudden they were
plunged into total darkness. They were entering Kure station.
Those who wanted to get out here were crowding towards
the door, but the tall 'Gollywog' waited until all the others
had alighted before he got up, ran to the exit, and in one
leap was down on the platform.
'Should I follow him? But what does he mean to me
actually? Why is it so feverishly important to me that I get to
know him?' Kawamoto got to his feet, with the intention of
following him, when 'Gollywog', who must have been thinking
it over, suddenly changed his mind and leaped back on board
the train which was already in motion.
He sat down in his old place and began to dig in his
pockets once again. His face was expressive of anxiety, even
of despair. 'He's exactly as unhappy as I am myself. Something has gone very wrong for him,' Ichiro decided. 'And
he's got nobody he can talk to about it. Again, just like me.'
At this point a very crumpled piece of paper fell out
of Kawamoto's travelling companion's side pocket. Quickly
Kawamoto leaned down, picked it up, and handed it to him.
'Thanks,' he said, and tucked the scrap of paper away in
the outside breast pocket of his jacket. Then in the tones of
one making a confession he added: "That is precisely what
I've been looking for all this time. This piece of paper is
worth ...' He hesitated, looking for the right word, 'worth a
fortune to me. A very, very large fortune.'
The train was screeching over newly laid rails, an emergency repair to the line.
'Would you care to know what's written on that piece of
paper?' Gollywog now asked, hooking it out of his breast
pocket once again. He held it out. 'Take it, please.1 It was a
Yosegakit one of those greetings containing words of affection
and encouragement, such as are given to friends before they
set out on a journey according to the old Japanese custom.
On the creased piece of paper, near to disintegration after so
many foldings and unfoldings, was written:
In China it was cold. In Japan it is icy. Don't forget me. Look
after yourself. 'Noppo' (Thin-leg).
Keep strong and healthy. Do nothing foolish. 'Mindanao'
(Philippines).
I'm already rejoicing about your pay-day in Hiroshima. Keep
your chin up, brother. 'Kutsuken' (Little boot).
And finally:
As a present I'd like a little bit of chocolate and some chewinggum. 'Chibiko' (Tiny).
Kawamoto told me:
*I quite forgot that I was in a moving train. Opposite sat
Moji-moji-san, watching me tensely as I read and reread the
note. I had forgotten all about my wrench, the bedding I
hadn't got, yes, even the hunger and the cold. Now Gollywog
explained to me, with a sort of pride, what those greetings
really meant, while I interrupted from time to time with "Is
that really so?" or "Ah ha!" or simply with a sigh.
*I did not learn Gollywog's real name either then or at a
later date. But he did tell me what his real nickname was.
They called him "Kutsuhei", which means Big Boot. He
also told me a certain amount about the authors of the
Yosegaki. "Mindanao", who had come back from the Philippines, was twelve years old. His friend "Noppo" was two
years older, also an orphan, and had made his way back to
Hiroshima from China. "Chibiko", who was eight years old,
had lost her mother in the Pikadon^ and her father had
been a soldier, posted as missing, believed killed. Finally
"Kutsuken" was the younger, fifteen-year-old brother of my
new friend "Kutsuhei".'
As he listened to Gollywog's story, Kawamoto began to
understand why he had behaved in so extraordinary a fashion
when the train had stopped at Kure station: he had wished to
jump out there because he could not bear the idea of
returning to his four protégés in Hiroshima with empty
hands.
'I'm what you might call the head of the family,' he
explained. 'And now I haven't got a tiny bit of chocolate for
Chibiko. They had all hoped so that the Americans would
take me on. But it was no good: you see, I don't own any
bedding of my own!'
They were passing by the hill of Saka, and Kawamoto
never so much as noticed it, so intently was he hanging on
Kutsuhei's words.
'I met my brother/ he was saying, 'quite accidentally, in
Hiroshima station in October 1945. For weeks he had been
looking for our mother and sister, and he kept on returning
to the station because he hoped that they might have fled
during the first panic and would eventually come back. Well,
they had obviously gone on a longer journey. But I - who
had been given up for dead by the whole family when I was
sent to the front - I did come back. They'd discharged me
from the army and I possessed nothing whatever in the world
except a single blanket. This I shared from then on with
Kutsuken.'
'And the others ...?’
'During my time in the army I'd really only learned one
thing: how to dig foxholes. So I simply dug a larger one now,
somewhere between the rubble, and made a nice little dugout, according to army regulations, as a home for my brother
and myself. We earned our daily ration of rice by polishing
shoes. Then one evening a tiny, sweet little girl - sweet, I tell
you, really charming! - came and begged from us. That was
Chibiko. We kept her to live with us right away. After all,
somebody had to look after her. As, for example, when two
hooligans snatched the rice-balls from her that she'd just
begged off a traveller. We set off after the louts at once,
caught them by the collar, gave them a good beating so that
they began to howl for mercy, and from then on they too
belonged to our little band. You know their names already,
Noppo and Mindanao, and I wouldn't care to say which of
the two is the cheekier. You'll get to know them, because
you'll come and visit us soon, won't you?1
'And that's how we two orphans, too poor even to possess
any bedding of our own, were brought together by a scrap of
paper,' Ichiro says; 'for hours we had sat opposite one
another in silence, and now we were suddenly old friends.
We parted, in mid-sentence as it were, at the Kaitachi station
and I promised to visit him and his friends for sure in the
near future. Next day, my courage restored, I went back to
work, and the first thing I did was to report the loss of my
monkey wrench. I had expected that I would be severely
reprimanded, but the foreman and my workmates forgave me
and told me not to worry. They said I shouldn't get so upset
about losing my wrench. It wasn't a tragedy, they said. But
would Kutsuhei, who was unemployed, forgive me for having a
regular job again?'
So ends Ichiro Kawamoto's description of his futile flight
to Hiro. He had found something quite other, and far more
valuable, than what he had sought: a comrade who had
shared his fate. This man, he felt, was the first real friend he
had ever had in his life.
Kazuo M. too had at last got a job. Ever since the Pikadon he
had been roaming the streets, with no real occupation, though
almost every evening, as soon as it grew dark, he would
attempt to do business with those American soldiers whom
he saw accompanied by Japanese girls.
A respectable organization, the Hiroshima Savings Bank,
had now taken him on as an assistant clerk. Then he was
able to turn to good account the training that he had had as a
'conscript worker1 during the last few months of the war. At
the age of sixteen he found himself the sole 'breadwinner' of
his family. Father Setsuo had insisted that the boy should
not resume his schooling, which the war had interrupted he spoke of a school as 'a waste of time' - and therefore now
treated him in a slightly more friendly fashion than heretofore.
Kazuo left his parents' home punctually each morning
carrying a schoolboy's satchel made of coarse canvas which
contained his midday meal, and would hurry into the makeshift city of booths and lean-tos. It was usually ni two ght by
the time he got home again. He was proud and contented
with his new life.
But a few weeks later he arrived back home one day at
noon.
'What's the matter, Oniichan (little brother)?' his sister
asked in surprised tones. 'You're quite pale. Have you been
fighting again?'
Kazuo had no wish to explain. When his anxious mother
came hurrying out of the kitchen, he only growled roughly:
'Nothing to worry about, Mother.'
He was happy that ever since 'the day' his mother had
given up asking questions; but today he would have been
pleased if she had, for once, insisted and had cross-questioned him. But she for her part had grown accustomed
since the Pikadon to others being moody and depressed,
including her own son. In such moods she preferred to leave
him alone.
For an hour or two Kazuo lay on his mattress with his eyes
shut. He had rolled up his empty luncheon bag, and was
using it as a pillow.
'I won't need it now,' he said to himself. But, as he told
me later, what he would really have liked to do would have
been to shout at the top of his voice:
'Cowards! Robbers! All of you!' Later, according to a
habit he had recently acquired, he noted down what had
happened to him that day:
'A girl named Kyoko shouted at me "Kazuchan". I'd only
been working in the office a short time, and here she was
calling me Kazuchan as if we were old friends. I reckon she's
about two years older than me. Not particularly pretty, but
always acting stuck-up, so everyone can see right away how
well brought up she was.
'Never could stand the way she talks to me. And, that
business today, well that's put paid to her so far as I'm
concerned. And, as it happens, she's my immediate boss.
'It happened during the midday break. Four or five of the
girls were talking and giggling together and then they began
laughing so much that it was actually more like squealing.
This girl had been shouting Kazuchan for some time, and I'd
been acting as though I'd heard nothing. After all what could I
answer? "Little Kazu, what's the matter with you?" she
asked me, and came right close up to me now. Her face was
only a few inches from mine.
'"Kazuchan," she asked softly, "wouldn't you like to earn a
bit extra?" These girls ask the dumbest questions.
'"Of course I would. Money's always useful."
'"In that case we've something to discuss with you." And
now suddenly the other four girls had crowded close around
me.
'"Are you really prepared to join in?"
'It was only at this moment that it occurred to me, for the
first time, how terribly poor we were. We couldn't even give
my sister a full bento (breakfast) to take to school with her.
' "But what is it you want me to do?" I asked.
' "You know everybody's got to be pretty smart to get along
today," Kyoko said suddenly.
'When I didn't say anything to this she went on more
softly: "It's a question of finding out which families were
completely wiped out by the atom bomb, with nobody left
alive at all. Near the Aioi Bridge and in the Dobashi Quarter
there must have been lots that happened to ... We'll check in
the files and see which ones had an account. When they did,
we'll produce a duplicate of their savings books. But for
ourselves! The supervisors won't notice anything. It's all so
obvious! These people will have lost everything except their
savings, and now they - that is to say, in reality, we - want to
draw them out of the bank. Don't look so stupid. We've tried it
all out, and nobody noticed anything. Well, what do you say,
Kazuchan! Won't you have a go, little Kazu?"
'Now I remembered what I had heard a few days ago. I
hadn't paid any attention to their remarks: "You, how did
you do today?" "A good haul." "Mine was pretty thin." "But
you hit the jackpot yesterday ..." "True enough, nee, hee!"
That was the way they'd talked, and I'd wondered at the
time what it was all about. Now I knew. These corpse-robbers
had been boasting to one another about their successes.
'I pulled myself together. "No," I said, "that's not the sort of
thing for me." I looked them straight in the face, one by
one, as I said it. My answer seemed to take the girls aback.
For a moment they just stood there, and I could see surprise
in their eyes, and fear too. 'Then Kyoko shouted:
'"Obviously Kazuchan is still wet behind the ears. That's
why he's so scared of everything, no matter how small."
'The girls now began to screech with laughter, to cover up
their embarrassment.
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Ho, ho, look at him, he's going all pink, the little boy!
Look how angry he's getting! Isn't he sweet?"
'Next moment one of the girls had rubbed her cheek
against my cheek, and her sparkling eyes were gazing invitingly into mine. All I wanted to do was to get away from
those eyes. I don't know why, but had I looked away it'd have
been all up with me. So I pulled myself together and stared
straight back into her eyes, and then I slapped her right
across the face.
'"I'm not coming back ..." I announced and I walked out
of the office. The girls just watched me. They were so
astonished they didn't know what to do.
'And now what? Father and Mother have been sickly ever
since the atom bomb. They rely on what I earn. Sister has
set her heart on an aluminium breakfast tin. No hope of it
now. But something like that, I really couldn't take part...'
On the first Sunday of February 1947, Kawamoto, as he had
agreed with Kutsuhei, caugh the seven A.M. train from Saka to
Hiroshima. It was not a passenger train, but a train
consisting of goods wagons which, as was not unusual at that
time, were used to carry passengers. 'Since there were no
windows,' he recalls, Ve had to keep the side doors open, or it
would have been as dark as pitch inside. A bitter wind
blew in and all the passengers tried to avoid the middle of
the truck, where it was coldest and crowded together near
the front. The ones standing by the walls stretched out their
arms to cling on. The ones in the middle had nothing to
hold on to. Each time the train took a curve we would be
tossed about, falling over each other and trampling on one
another's feet, apologizing all the while.'
Despite the earliness of the hour the square hi front of the
railway station was already full of people. Ichiro looked
around for a shoeshine boy, for Kutsuhei had promised to
meet him, and for a moment, amidst this crowd of strangers,
he felt as lost as he had done a few days ago when he had
been staring into the snow falling outside the barracks at
Hiro.
Then he saw, far away, a hand waving a blacking brush.
Gollywog came towards him with a smile. With one hand he
was pulling little Chibiko along behind him. She gave him a
dignified bow, as if she were not wearing a torn monpe but
the most beautiful kimono.
'Are you the brother from the Andes?' she asked.
'Needless to say I've been boasting about your having been
to Peru,' Kutsuhei explained. 'We're all particularly proud
that our new friend should be so widely travelled.'
'May I carry your parcel for you?' Chibiko asked. She was
already carrying a parcel of her own, a bundle wrapped in
old newspaper.
'No, thanks. I am sorry that you had to come here in such
cold weather to meet me.'
'Not at all. Besides, Chibiko has already been working.' He
nodded towards her bundle, and winked. In the sharp
sunshine of that icy February morning Hiroshima seemed to
the visitor to be entirely changed. Now the town had
something of a hastily constructed fairground about it, for in
the past twelve months the number of places of
entertainment had increased remarkably. Whole amusement
districts had sprung up in the neighbourhood of the station
and near the city centre, streets of bars, night-clubs, brothels,
cinemas and gambling dens, complete with brilliant advertisements and balloons waving in the wind. The largest of these
new quarters was called, arrogantly, Shintenchi, the New
World. A grotesque and crazy new world!
Apart from a single housing project in the Motomachi
quarter^ the city authorities had so far been able to do almost
nothing by way of finding accommodation for the many
homeless. Therefore everyone was busy attempting to make
a roof for himself by his own endeavours.
'We've found a real posh district for ourselves,' Gollywog
remarked as they set off. 'In Noboricho, which is where our
little home is, only the most respectable people lived in the
old days.1 They were walking through a bewildering chaos of
corrugated iron and wooden huts, an untidy settlement
without any recognized arrangement of streets. All of a
sudden they found themselves in front of a waist-high fence
which looked, if anything, even less respectable and civilized
than did the other shanties.
A little beyond were the remains of a ruined wall, skilfully
utilized; the rest of the building consisted of rusty metal,
blackened planks and straw mats in more or less advanced
stages of decomposition, which gave to the edifice something
of the appearance of a huge basket.
'This is our Himaro&ri-jo (Sunflower Castle),' said
Kutsuhei with an exaggerated wave of the hand. 'When
we're in a less boastful mood we call it the worm basket.'
From within voices were audible:
'Come in, brother from the Andes! But quickly, or we'll all
freeze. Mind your head! Be careful, you've got to make
yourself small in here.'
It was dark as a cave inside the windowless interior of the
shack. Gradually the candlelight lit up the heads and faces of
the inhabitants.
Formal introductions took up a considerable time, for the
'Band' insisted on the most punctilious manners. When for
example Kutsuken, the brother of Moji-moji-san, tried to
introduce himself in a manner that was contrary to etiquette,
Chibiko reprimanded him at once:
I am is what you say. I am Kutsuhei's younger brother.
You must never leave out the "I am". It would be impolite to
the guest.'
'What's to eat?'
Chibiko emptied her parcel: rice, fish, seaweed, even a
piece of pickled white radish. 'A good morning's begging,
little one.' It did not strike the orphans as at all shameful that
they should beg from strangers. But when they were all
together a decree laid down by Kutsuhei, the 'Paterfamilias',
was absolutely binding upon them all: they did not beg from
one another.
Kawamoto too had brought a contribution.
'I almost forgot,' he said, feigning absent-mindedness. He
untied his old red furoskiki (bandana). Out of it he took a
small, flat piece of 'American Bread' made of corn meal
which he had baked himself in the furnaces of the Saka
Electricity Works.
Soon the odour of the meal being warmed up over the fire
permeated the entire dark room. They broke the bread with
their fingers, and sipped hot water, as if it were the most
delectable tea, from tiny cups that they had themselves made
out of old cans.
Kawamoto now began to notice the room. The beds
consisted of piles of dried leaves, which were brought down
from the mountains. 'They're much softer than an ordinary
Futon,' Noppo boasted. On the walls hung their straw hats,
army capes and a few other garments, properly arranged in
order, for Kutsuhei insisted on tidiness.
In the middle, nailed to the wall, was a photograph. One
of the children must have torn it out of a newspaper. It
showed a tiny child, clinging to a grown-up's hand. It was
clearly a woman's hand, perhaps that of the child's mother.
Whether or not this was so it was impossible to say, for there
was nothing written under the picture, which indeed was not
even the whole photograph. What the rest may have been
was left to the imagination.
*A lovely picture,' Ichiro remarked.
'Hm ...' said the children. They had no wish to say more.
Thenceforth Ichiro Kawamoto spent every Sunday, and as
many week-day evenings as he had free, with his new friends
from 'Sunflower Castle'. He recalls many a conversation and
many a tale told by the children concerning their adventures
and their triumphs, but it is one afternoon that he remembers
with especial pleasure; this was the occasion when he invited
his friends to go to the pictures with him.
A new cinema had recently been opened, immediately
behind the railway station. Its auditorium still reeked of fresh
plaster, paint and new wood. This was quite in order, and
indeed suitable for the film, for what was being shown was
Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush. The crudely knockedtogether shacks of the Californian miners' settlement, the
saloons, the rough housing - it all reminded the children
very much of their own city of Hiroshima. But what pleased
them best were those scenes in which the little moustachioed
and bow-legged man indulged in his grotesque hunger
fantasies.
For a long, long time after they had left that dark cinema
the children and Kawamoto continued to live the Gold Rusk.
'Oh ... Oh ... I'm doubled up with hunger,' the spindlylegged Noppo would squeak, pulling the most fearful faces
all the while. 'What is this I see before me? A delicious
spring chicken, is it not?' And he would make a grab for
Chibiko, who would run away, screeching with laughter and
fear. 'Don't flutter your wings so, my pullet,' he would go on,
and his victim would run away from his clowning, squealing
nervously, to hide behind a hut.
Kutsuken, the shoeshine boy, had particularly enjoyed the
scene in which Charlie with enormous relish devours a boiled
boot. He would try to snatch the sandal from Kawamoto's
left foot.
'You've no idea what a delicious, juicy beefsteak that'll
make,' he would say. 'Please. I'll pay you a whole gold bar
for it, I want it so much.' Then he would press one of the
many blackened roof tiles that had been scattered everywhere
since 'that day' into his hand, run off with the sandal and
leave Ichiro to hop about on one foot, weak with laughter.
But when at last they had reached their 'Worm Basket',
Kutsuhei, who already possessed the common sense of a
grown man, put an end to the clowning. 'Enough nonsense,'
he said. 'Tomorrow you may be really hungry again.'
From Ichiro Kawamoto's diary:
'6 August 1947. I bought some chocolate for Chibiko.
Since genuine chocolate is expensive, I could only afford the
ersatz sort. But Chibiko was delighted with it all the same. I
didn't tell her that today was the anniversary of that day
when the atom bomb was dropped. All I said was; "I want to
give you a present." But Kutsuhei and Kutsuken were in a
bad temper all day. They couldn't even bring themselves to
say anything about the fried potatoes that I'd brought for
supper. They didn't talk about it, but I noticed that they
knew exactly what son of a date this was ... Noppo and
Mindanao only ate half their potatoes too, and then slipped
out as if they had something on their conscience. I went out
as well.
'"The red roof on the green hilltop,.."
'Noppo began to sing the song called "The Hilltop where
the Bell Rings out". He sang it softly.
'Chibiko joined us. Her voice was louder than Noppo's
timid treble:
The bell rings out, chin kon kan, It
rings, it rings, it rings,
The mother and the father say:
Little ones, watch out!
'Noppo's thin voice and Chibiko's loud one merged and
were audible inside Sunflower Castle.
'"Kutsuken, Kutsuhei, come on out, friends, and join in the
singing!" That was what they called, but they got no answer. I
crept back into the dark hut.
'"What's up? You're not sitting in here crying like a couple
of little babies, are you?"
'"Brother from the Andes, do not you too feel terribly
alone?" Kutsuken asked, the tears rolling down his cheeks.
Outside, the singing went on.
'"Alone? Why alone?"
'"Why are our mother and our father no longer with us?
Why?"
"'Yes, it's true, your parents are no longer alive. But you
two are here, despite everything, and you're grown men." I
was attempting to give them encouragement. "Why give in
like this? You and Kutsuhei ought to pull yourselves together,
yes, particularly you two. Noppo and Mindanao would give in
completely if they were to see you like this. Normally you
give the three out there strength to go on living. And if you'd
like to know the truth, you've given me strength too."
'"Thank you, brother from the Andes," said Kutsuhei. "But
sometimes it's really too much to bear. Whatever we do, we
get blamed for everything. If anything is missing around here,
or even if a couple of windows are broken, the cops, and the
nasty old woman too, immediately say that it must be us who
did it. And then they all go for us. They scream at us and
throw stones. They deliberately dump all their garbage right
beside our hut. Even their chamber-pots are emptied here.
Have you ever been as badly treated as that?"
'"Yes, when I spent three months in my honke (family
home), at every meal they said spiteful things about my dead
parents. I was so upset by this that I wouldn't even sleep in
that house, and I used to creep out every night and curl up in
the entrance of a nearby temple. Also they often used to blame
me when in fact the others had broken things. But in
the long run I've always found people to help me over the
bad patches ..."
'For a while they said nothing. Then Kutsuhei got up and
spoke in a voice that was far more grown-up than usual: "It's
warm in here, Kutsuken. Why don't we go swimming?"
"'Okay ..." They had picked up this expression, like so
many others, from the Americans.
'We climbed the stone steps to the Ohta. These were the
same steps up which so many hundreds of people had run,
driven almost mad by fear: it was the same river in which
they had sought safety on that day, flaming, living torches.
'We lowered ourselves cautiously into the river. The water
was chilly and refreshing. The two brothers swam in a
somewhat comical fashion, a wildly thrashing free-style. Even
in the water we could still hear the others singing...
'"We want to swim too!" Mindanao and Chibiko had
followed us, and were taking off their ragged trousers. With
shrill screams of delight they jumped into the water and
began to splash each other frantically. This flowing river was
the same one in which Chibiko's mother had drowned on
the night of the Pikadon. And now Chibiko and Mindanao
were enjoying themselves in its water, while Kutsuhei and
Kutsuken wanted to show what good swimmers they were.
But from the banks came the smell of incense, where the
survivors had lit sticks in memory of those who were already
half-forgotten. It was the only reminder, on this day of
anniversary. Later I went with them to the market in front
of the station, and we bought mostly noodles (shockingly
expensive). We were so hungry, we wolfed them down.'
8
'How many potatoes have you, Chibiko?'
'Three. Is that right?'
'Quite right. Now we're going to eat them. You'll get
exactly the same amount as Kutsuhei, Kutsuken, Noppo,
Mindanao and myself. So how much potato do you get?'
Chibiko counted on her little finger, her lips moving
silently as she did so.
'Think carefully, Chibiko. One ...'
'One half!'
'Very good. From now on we'll call you Chibiko-san (Miss
Chibiko). Like a grown-up young lady.'
Whenever he could spare the time these days, Kawamoto
gave Chibiko lessons. She had herself asked for this. She
had seen, as summer ended, that the Hiroshima schools were
beginning to reopen - some in the open air, others in new
buildings, others again in the cellars or the ruins of the old
schools - and had watched the other children learning how to
read and write and do arithmetic. So she had asked Kutsuhei
why she was not allowed to go to school too. 'I'd still have
enough spare time for my work,' she had added.
The elder children had tried to explain to her that it wasn't
quite so simple. Any child applying for entrance to a school
would be immediately put into an orphanage, so that she
wouldn't be allowed to stay with her friends in the Worm
Basket. And the newspapers carried disagreeable descriptions
of life in those institutions. It appeared that in some of the
orphanages there were real 'bosses', themselves children,
who modelled themselves on the gangster bosses, and who
compelled the other children to surrender a portion of their
food rations and to work for those bosses like slaves.
'But we'll teach you everything we know ourselves, Chibiko,' Mr Gollywog had announced, and so they took turns
giving the little girl her lessons. They showed her how to
form her letters, how to tell the time, and they even taught
her to paint a few Japanese ideographs.
Kawamoto was particularly preoccupied with the little girl's
education. He showed her how to wash properly, how to
comb her hair, the different ways of speaking to different
sorts of people according to their age and class. But what the
child loved best was when Ichiro gave her her 'geography
lesson'. Then he would tell long stories about his own
childhood in South America, about the people he had met
there, about the tropical foods and fruits that he had eaten as a
boy.
So Kawamoto came almost every day to Sunflower Castle,
and the children would come running out joyfully to greet
him. Thus Ichiro was all the more surprised when one
evening they could hardly bring themselves even to wish him
a good day. They stood about their hut, evidently in the
worst of moods, each one with a longer face than the next.
Mindanao took the 'brother from the Andes' aside, and
whispered: 'Kutsuhei has brought a girl here. The sister of a
friend. And we're not allowed into the house until she goes.'
Kutsuken was so angry with his elder brother that he
would scarcely address a word to Ichiro. Instead, he kept
muttering to himself: 'Ever since she showed up, we've had
no more fun, no fun at all.'
Only Chibiko seemed to derive a certain pleasure from
this novel situation. 'Soon Kutsuhei will be a bridegroom,'
she chirruped. This made Kutsuken so angry that he would
certainly have boxed her ears, had she not skipped nimbly
out of the way just in time.
A couple of days later Mr Gollywog and his new friend
vanished from Hiroshima. He had not so much as left a
message for his brother and the other children.
Kawamoto immediately took a whole day off from work to
console Kutsuken. The other three that had been 'left
behind' also did not go to their work in front of the railway
station.
'Kutsuken, it's up to you now to take Kutsuhei's place,'
Ichiro told him. 'You're the "head of the family" from now
on. Keep your chin up! When your brother first took on the
job of looking after you all, conditions were really very much
worse than they are today.*
But Kutsuken went on sulking. His comrades all did their
best to improve his mood. They sang songs, pulled faces,
imitated Charlie Chaplin's unsteady walk. Today, though,
there was nothing they could do to make 'Little Boot' laugh.
At last with a sigh Chibiko made her great decision. She
crept into the corner where her sleeping-bag filled with
leaves lay, and from behind it drew forth her 'treasure',
which up till now none of the others had been allowed to
touch, or even look at. It was a bundle of carefully smoothed
and folded silver paper. For months Chibiko had been
collecting the silver paper from old cigarette packets and
chocolate wrappings thrown away in the streets. She had
often followed American or Australian soldiers for hours on
end, in the hope that they would throw away a sheet of
glittering tin-foil. Whenever a GI or an Aussie gave her a
sweet, she always saw to it that it was one wrapped in silver
paper.
Without a word the little girl offered the moody boy her
most prized possession. Now at last he did seem to be
somewhat impressed, and he stroked her hair gratefully. But
all he said, in a voice that was still sulky was: 'What shall we
do with this now?'
'I suddenly remembered my own childhood,' Kawamoto
recalls. 'My mother was unable to buy me a mouth-organ. So
I got a thin sheet of paper and walked about blowing through
it. The paper would tremble gently, and by blowing now hard,
now soft, now here, now there, I learned how to get a tune
out of it. I did this now. I took the silver paper from a packet
of Peacelf> and on it I blew the tune "The Hilltop where the
Bell Rings out". They alt gazed at me in amazement.
'"Not bad, eh?" I asked them.
'"Oh, oh, WANDAFUUL! Very, very guud,' cried Chibiko, imitating the American soldiers and their accent. She
took another of the pieces of silver paper and tried to blow a
tune on it. But all that happened was a humming sound
without any real tune. Noppo and Mindanao tried next. They
too could not manage a tune. They were holding the paper
too close to.their lips.
"'Just keep on trying, you'll get it eventually. But now you
boys whistle, Chibiko shall sing, and I myself will play the
silver-paper mouth-organ."
'So our song about the Bell on the Hill rang forth. Three
days later they'd all learned the trick except Chibiko.
Kutsuken turned out to be a remarkably good performer, and
it seemed as though this had really consoled him for the
departure of his brother.'
16
A type of imitation American cigarette, popular in postwar Japan.
Only a few days later something happened which Kawamoto
had been dreading ever since Kutsuhei's disappearance. He
arrived at Sunflower Castle, to find it deserted.
At first he thought that the children were playing a joke on
him. He pulled up the straw mat that covered the entrance
and peered into the dark interior, calling out as he did so:
'Don't hide. I'll find you quick enough!'
There was no answer, not even a laugh. He Ut a match,
and saw at first glance that the hut had been entirely cleared
out. Hanging from the low ceiling, and stuck to a candleholder, there was a message. Kawamoto took the note out of
doors, where he read: 'We can't go on like this. The brother
from the Andes can't bother about us every day. Kutsuhei is
in Okayama. I'm following him there tomorrow. Good luck!
Kutsuken.'
The note did not say what had happened to Chibiko,
Noppo and Mindanao. Had they gone with him? Or were
they somewhere in the city? Perhaps. No, they must be!
Kawamoto became obsessed with the idea that he must find
the children. For how would they manage, all on their own?
Day after day, when he had finished work, he would wander
through the new city that was arising from the ruins of the old,
poking into corners, talking to black marketeers, gangsters,
prostitutes and countless other Furoji. It was all in vain,
There was no trace of the children. On those Sundays when
he was free, Ichiro widened the circle of his search, going as
far as Kure. He even visited the orphanages, because it
occurred to him that the three homeless children might have
fallen into the clutches of the authorities for the protection of
children.
Each time that Kawamoto crossed that part of the town
where Sunflower Castle had stood, he hoped that in the
hubbub of voices he might suddenly distinguish Chibiko's
laugh or Noppo's thin and childish treble, or that Mr
Gollywog's unruly crop of hair would emerge from the Worm
Basket, or Kutsuken try jokingly to steal one of his sandals.
And each time Ichiro had to observe how the 'Castle' was
deteriorating more and more, from week to week. First a
board fell in, then one mat after the other vanished, and
finally the corrugated iron roof made its way to the black
market. Those charming neighbours were looting it,
systematically.
So it disappeared piece by piece, as happens when a
bamboo heart is eaten, leaf by leaf. Finally all that remained
was the square hole which had been their fireplace and the
foxhole that Kutsuhei had originally dug in October 1945,
when he had come here as a freshly-discharged soldier home
from the wars, and was creating a shelter for his brother and
himself.
Then came the snow which covered everything, flakes
whirling down on to Hiroshima, from a dull, grey sky.
Thousands and thousands of them, each one a tiny, separate
star.
'ATOM BOY'
1
The first anniversary of 6 August, that day on which their
city had been obliterated in a fraction of a second, had been
celebrated by the citizens of Hiroshima with quiet dignity.
Thousands upon thousands of white lanterns, each bearing
the name of one person who was dead or missing, had been
floated down the Ohta and out to sea. A man by the name of
Seichiro Kakihara, who before the war had neither borne a
famous name nor held high office, had pronounced the
oration commemorating the dead. Amidst all the flurry of
reconstruction it was he who first reminded the living of
their own people who had passed on. It was on his initiative
that in the summer of 1946 an artistically tasteless Tower of
Spiritual Peace had been built, inside which were preserved
the names of all the victims of the bomb.
How different it all was one year later, on 6 August 1947!
For three days there was singing, dancing and drinking.
There were masked balls, processions, fireworks. From early
morning till late at night the streets were filled with noise.
It is understandable that the foreign observers who
attended this so-called 'Festival of Peace' should have been
shocked by the lack of piety and of taste. They were silenced
by being told that it would be wrong to judge the Japanese
according to Western standards. In the Far East such earsplitting memorial services in honour of the dead were
absolutely normal, or so they were informed.
But it was not the Westerners alone who voiced such
criticisms. The loud indecency with which the memory of so
unspeakably agonizing an event was celebrated caused deep
displeasure to many of the survivors as well, and they
protested in the strongest terms against this transformation
of a solemn memorial day into a coarse, popular festival.
Their cruellest, and unfortunately not unjustified complaint was that 'people' - by which they meant the traders
and merchants of Hiroshima - 'were cashing in on the dead'.
In fact the project of having a great 'Festival of Peace' had
originated in the newly reorganized Chamber of Commerce.
.The chairman, Totaro Nakamura, on the occasion of the
opening in March 1947 of the new Association for the Advancement of Tourism, had proposed that the attention of Japan and
of the entire world should be focused on Hiroshima by
means of an International Festival of Peace. The first person
to express doubts about this idea was Sm'nzo Hamai. But
one month later he was promoted from Deputy Mayor to
first Mayor of Hiroshima, and in his new capacity he had no
choice but to do his best to forward this project, despite all
the reservations that he had expressed.
On 6 August at 8.15 A.M., that is to say at precisely the
hour at which the bomb had been dropped, the new and
active First Citizen of Hiroshima declared the Festival open,
standing on a plinth at the foot of the bridge. Peace bells
rang out. At the same moment hundreds of 'peace doves'
fluttered skywards. There followed a short prayer for the
victims and the reading of a message from General MacArthur. Then came many, many speeches (all previously cleared
with the censor) in which no single reference to the horrors
of the atomic bombing was allowed. And finally Mayor
Hamai read an impressive 'Declaration of Peace'.
Throughout the whole day two Buddhist priests chanted
prayers from the Tower of the Dead, close to the tribunal.
But their voices were soon drowned by the din of dance
music.
The reporters of the Chugoku Shimbun have described this
macabre carnival in the following words:
'Darkness and light played a duet in the joy-filled city of
Hiroshima. Those many persons who had lost their nearest
and dearest wept tears of memory, prayed at the Buddhist
Ceremonies for the Dead, or sat at home and read the
scriptures. But no sooner did they pass through their front
doors than they were met by strident dance music played
upon gramophones, and by processions of masked dancers
moving through the streets. Seventy or more young girls in
the most beautiful kimonos came pouring out of the Shintenchi Quarter. They wore flowers in their hair and danced the
new Heiwa-Qnda (the Peace Dance), the words of which are:
Pika to Hikkatta
Genshi e no tama ni
Yoiyaga
Tonde agatte Heiva
No ffato yo ...
(The atomic ball
loosed sharpest lightning,
Yoi-yaga!
They fly upwards,
the doves of peace ...)
'By midday at least five times as many
people as usual were in the streets. And in the business
district the shopkeepers were saying to themselves that now
was the time to cash in. They hung up lanterns, with the
announcement: "Greatpeace sale!" Sweat poured from the
brows of the young shop assistants and they calculated that
their take would be three times that of a normal day.
Dancing went on until late into this summer night.'
Among those who resented such commercialism, and who
therefore kept away, was Kazuo M. The entry in his diary
for this day runs:
'Everywhere in the town there is now jazz ... Cinemas
are springing up like bamboo shoots after the rain. Dance
halls are raking in the money. I sometimes ask myself
whether this is the "Peace" for which we have longed. True
reconstruction, however, should consist of more than the
building of houses and the laying of streets (I hear we are to
have one a hundred metres wide!). What is happening about
spiritual reconstruction... ? I suddenly found myself on the
road that leads to the Cemetery for the Unknown Dead on
Hijiyama Hill. I felt that I must visit Yasuji and Sumiko ...
The sun was just sinking, and in the cemetery I came
upon an elderly woman. She was kneeling, and crying out:
"Hajime, Hajime ..." That must have been the name of her
son, or grandson. I could share her feelings. Since I had no
wish to disturb her, I slipped away. Above the streets of
Hiroshima the city lights cast a brilliant red glow ...'
Kazuo's notes for the years 1947 and 1948 are even more
deeply permeated with emotional outbursts than are the
earlier entries in his journal. He was coming to feel ever more
clearly that his attempt to remain 'pure' in an environment
pulsating with lust for life - an environment of a heartlessness
and a corruption that disgusted him - could scarcely succeed.
His protests against the postwar epoch grew to screams of
hatred. His inability to live in and with this changed, new age
was bound to lead him into ever sharper conflicts and
increasingly perilous situations. In his diary he describes this
period of his life as 'The Story of my wandering from Job to
Job'. There I read:
'X Month, X Day, 1947. Today I started work in the
Asahi Theatre, a medium-sized cinema, in the advertising
department. Got the job through a newspaper "Positions
Vacant" ad. Since I enjoy drawing and painting, I thought it
would just suit me. So I'll try hard to keep it.
'First day: Washed out sixty paint brushes. They were
encrusted with old paint, hard as wood. Thought to myself:
how can anyone have allowed such fine brushes to get in so
disgusting a state? Cleaned them as thoroughly as possible.
Then came the sticking up of the posters. Not at all easy.
But taken by and large a pleasant day. The head of the
advertising department seems a nice man.
(
X Month, X Day, 1947. Today I quarrelled with the
cinema projectionist. Subject: Hiropon. Told him that nightwork makes me tired. So he advised me to take Hiropon.
Presumably he meant it well. I told him stimulants are bad
for the health. This annoyed him. Finally he called me a
coward, and I shouted back "Bakayarol" (fool). The head of
the advertising department separated us, and we stopped
quarrelling. He said to me: "I see what you mean, but nightworkers can't get by without Hiropon. You can act sensible
and scorn it today, but just you wait: one of these days you'll
be asking for a couple of shots yourself. The thing is, you're
so young ..."'
'X Month, X Day, 1947. I'm still worrying about what the
department head said to me the other day. Maybe I really am
too "green", but at least I can tell the difference between
right and wrong. I keep thinking: If only Yasuji were still
alive. Since I lost him I've really been entirely alone. Actually, I
often used to quarrel with him too. We would then say
horrible things to one another, but deep down each of us
thought about the other: He's really a grand chap! If I was
ever unhappy, he would always cheer me up. For me it's still
as though I'd only lost Yasuji yesterday. Yet sometimes it
seems as if it were many, many years ago. I don't even know
how he spent his last months on earth. If only I could cry out
"Hi, Yasuji!" and he were to be standing there saying "Here I
am!" If . . . yes, if . . . If he were alive ... If he were to
come back ... Nonsense! Yasuji will never come back again.
Goodnight, Yasuji ...
'X Month, X Day, 1947. I swore to myself I'd never get
into a quarrel again, but hardly six months have passed since I
made that promise to myself and already I've broken it. It
was a funny business. The head of my department - he says
he's a Communist - was praising Soviet Russia. Marx says
so and so, and Lenin says this and that . . . I had no wish
just to sit there in silence, listening to him the way a man
listens to his boss, nodding from time to time. "Soviet Russia
played a dirty trick on us," I said. "They waited till Japan
was knocked out, unable to defend itself - till we were as
helpless as carp before they're tossed into the cook-pot and then they took advantage of our misfortune . .. Declaring
war on Japan and pretending they'd defeated us ..."
'But he's not the type to accept he's beaten and be silent
... Since he's my boss he ordered me to meet him in the
auditorium after the performance. Nothing looks so forlorn
and sad as an empty cinema. I sat down beside him. For a
while he stared at me in silence. Then his lips began to
twitch. So I saw how angry he was. He said to me: "If we're
going to quarrel, I shall win!" But we didn't quarrel. Instead he
yelled at me: "Fool! Worm! You're fired as from tomorrow!"
'He was already disappearing through the public door. It all
happened in a moment. I just sat there as if I'd been pole-axed.
The words "fired . . . as from tomorrow" had knocked me out
more effectively than a straight left to the chin. Sat there, not
knowing what to do, in the deserted cinema ... So here I am,
for the second time, a failure who can't keep a job ...'
*X Month, X Day, 1947. "If there is a God who lets a man
fall, then there is another who picks him up again." So runs
the saying. Only three days after my dismissal I was enabled,
thanks to the intervention of a neighbour, to start work with
the firm of Kirita & Co. This firm deals with the installation
of water pipes. I've been taken on as assistant to the man
responsible for the planning of tank installations. This is a
real solid firm, and not only externally so. The more one gets
to know it, the solider it proves to be.
'We are fifteen -or sixteen assistants, busy with plumb-lines
and spirit-levels. The work requires such a high degree of
concentration that none of us even glances about him. A job
like this not only seems fine to me, but it fills me with selfrespect. It's often so quiet that you can hear yourself breathe.
Engineer Terada, who is instructing me, shows me what it's
all about. Since I'd already begun to study draughtsmanship in
the Middle School, my progress is rapid.
'X Month, X Day, 1948. At last I got a couple of days off,
and walked around as I used to do, aimlessly, through the
streets. There are still spots that remind me of "that frightful
day". But the Hime-mukashi-yomagP1 that used to grow wild
everywhere is no more to be seen. Everywhere there's the
sound of hammering, everywhere new houses are springing
17
A weed that covered the ruins after die Pikadon.
up ... At the foot of the bridge was standing an ex-soldier
in a white robe. He wore a bowl hung about his neck, and
called to the people walking by: "Please, please ..."
'X Month, X Day, 1948. For the past month a rumour has
been going around the factory that we're moving. Today it
was announced officially. I'm being sent to the Occupying
Power in Kaitaichi. The department head explained to me:
"We've been given the job of installing a heating system in
Camp Kaitaichi. We'll be needing five or six stokers, two or
three engineers, and one assistant. You're the assistant..."
'In the afternoon a truck brought desks and draughtsman's
materials to the new office in the camp. Boiler room,
washrooms, offices, everything smells of new paint... I was
busy arranging the desks when an Australian soldier walked
in. "Kon-nichi-iva.", he said, and I was amazed, because he
had no accent at all. He smiled at me, and repeated his
entire Japanese vocabulary to us: ojo-san (girl), arigato (thank
you), ikura-desu (what price?), Hanako-ckan (a girl's name),
mo-takusan desu (enough, enough). Meanwhile he gestured
with his hands and feet, explaining what the words meant.
We all laughed. For half the day he was there, helping us
move the desks and chairs. That there could be such men
among the Australians too! My opinion of foreigners is
beginning to change a bit. His name is Johnny and he calls
me "Kassu-san". We can half understand one another pretty
well. He even gave me a bit of chocolate.
'X Month, X Day, 1948. It seems that Johnny isn't his real
name. He brought another NCO with him. This one said he
was called Johnny too. Maybe they've got the same name. A
confusing state of affairs. I'm just going to call them both
Johnny. This other Johnny is eighteen years old and six foot
tall. I told them both about the catastrophe. I told them
about Yasuji and Sumiko as well. It's a pity my English is so
bad. All the same they understood what I was saying quite
well. "Oh, atom bomb, Hiroshima," they said softly, and at
the end, when I said "No more Hiroshimas", they repeated it
after me.
(
As assistant to the engineer I've had to test whether the
steam in the pipes reaches all over the big camp. So I have
also had to go into that part of the camp which is marked
PROHIBITED AREA FOR JAPANESE NO TRESPASSING! To do this I was issued with a special pass from
headquarters. I felt insulted that as a Japanese on Japanese
soil I could not go where I pleased without special permission.
My anger increased when I read on the back of the pass that
once I had completed the job I was to hand it in again at
once. After all, this is our country!'
'X Month, X Day, 1948. A bearded Australian soldier, waving a
little stick in one hand, shouts angrily: "No loitering!" And
the half-starved Japanese labourers work as if they expect
him to hit them with his stick ... "Hubba, hubba, hubba.
No loitering!" Each time he brandishes his stick it makes an
unearthly whistling sound.
'Here there is no pretence even of that minimum of
respect which surely every conqueror must give to the
conquered. The relationship is exactly the same as that
between men and beasts. And in addition to that, in this case
the "animal" is of a particularly inferior sort, debased below
the level of swine and snakes. And we poor devils must
accept all this humiliation as if we enjoyed it.
'When I'd done my usual round and was back in the
office, I heard that there had been trouble there too. One of
the stokers was maintaining that his wrist-watch had been
stolen. Needless to say by one of the soldiers. They do
whatever they please. Recently a stenographer was raped by
three soldiers, one after the other. I heard tell that one of the
laundry girls had simply been kidnapped, taken off to one of
the barrack huts, and was kept locked up in there. "They're
the conquerors and that's all there is to it. There's nothing to
be done." That's what our people say. In most cases the
victims have no choice but "to weep and go to bed", as the
Japanese saying has it. I advised the stoker he ought to go to
headquarters and demand the return of his watch.
'All day long, disagreeable occurrences of this sort.
'X Month, X Day, 1948. Checked the steam ventilators in
the soldiers' sleeping quarters. From one room I heard a
woman's voice. She was shouting. I ran across quickly,
opened the door a few inches, and put my head in. A woman,
stark naked, in a man's arms. I must say I didn't at all get the
impression that she had been forced to do this. Without
realizing what I was doing I said "Ah!" because I was so
surprised. The two figures jumped apart, as if they'd had an
electric shock. They both stared at me. When the female saw
that I was young she gave me a cheap smile.
'What I wanted to do was to shout "Traitress!" at the top
of my lungs. But my emotion was so great that when I did
say the word it was in a hoarse, low voice. Then the woman's
expression changed. She reached for a glass standing beside
her.
'She's going to throw it at me, I thought, and at the very
same moment it crashed against the door and broke into a
hundred pieces.
'"Get out, you filthy guttersnipe!" she screeched at me.
She had jumped up and was screaming the vilest things. Her
naked body was very light-skinned. I spat and ran away. The
tart went on screaming at me till I was out of earshot.
'When I was back at my drawing-board I could not get the
picture of this whitish body and her snake-like arms out of
my head.*
'"Hi, atom boy!"
'A soldier walked into the boiler room. It was Nixon. He
would often walk in here, hit the stokers, and when they
didn't hit back he'd amuse himself by throwing lumps of coal at
them. As a joke, naturally. He was supple as a worm and a
pretty good boxer.
'Now he walked up to me, pointed to a can of beer he was
holding, and began to mumble something very quickly. The
only words I caught were: "Beer . . . hot . . . boiler ...
shovels ..." I reckoned that what he was trying to say was:
"Put the beer on the shovel and heat it in the boiler." Had I
known English better, I'd have answered him at once: "I'm
not your servant. And I'm certainly not going to do you any
sort of a kindness, because of the horrible way you always
treat the stokers." But unfortunately, I couldn't express all
this. So I replied simply, but violently: "No!"
'His face assumed an expression of fury mingled with
astonishment.
'"Shut up!" he screamed. At the same time he was
winking, as if to show me what fun he was having at my
expense. His right hand lay clenched against his chest, while
with the left he aimed a couple of blows in my direction.
'Normally I do not pay much attention to humiliations of
this sort. But I was still in a high state of nervous tension, as a
result of the earlier scene with the naked girl and the
soldier, so I said to myself: "If he so much as touches me,
he's had it!"
'I grabbed a shovel that was close at hand. Almost at the
same moment Nixon kicked out at me. His foot caught my
elbow. This caused me such pain that I dropped the shovel.
“Eeeeei!" I was half unconscious. "Devil take it!" I seized
the shovel again and swung it through the air. Once, twice,
the third time I felt I had hit something.
'"Kazuo-san, you've ..."
'When I was myself again I found that two or three of our
workers were standing around me. They were gripping my
arms. My hands felt sticky. It was blood. Blood everywhere..
. even on my overalls. Frightful. And at my feet lay Nixon.
'I must have killed him ...
'I know there is no direct connection between my fight
with Nixon and the fearful misery of the atomic bomb. But
deep in my heart there remains a tragic scar, a scar caused
by fire. Scar-tissue on the face, the hands, the feet, can
sometimes be removed by surgery, and a certain degree of
healing achieved. But the cheloid in my heart can never
vanish altogether ... And whenever I see a foreigner the
wound opens again.
'So it was with Nixon. He had not even taken part in the
destruction of Hiroshima. He had killed neither Yasuji nor
Sumiko. No, indeed not. But he exploited the fact that he
belonged to the conquerors in order to humiliate and despise
every Japanese. For that reason alone I cannot forgive him.
And if my body must be cut into a thousand pieces for it, I
shall still avenge the destruction of Hiroshima! Only a victim
of the atom bomb could understand this feeling. And only
my heart can conceive this blind fury of mine.'
'"Kazuo-san, run away quickly . . . Run, hurry!" That is
what my workmates were shouting at me, and I could hear
the fear in their voices.
'"Why should I run away?" I shouted back at them. "I
don't regret having killed Nixon. Nixon isn't an American,
it's true. But all the same he's a foreigner and a conqueror »
' "Okay, okay ... But now disappear, and fast."
'I turned around. There stood the two Johnnies and, to my
delight, they didn't look at all angry.
'"All right, Kassu-san, leave the rest to us. We'll sort this
one out. If you hang around, it'll be that much harder."
'How cowardly, to run away now! But they were all so
excited and upset. So I made up my mind to go home.
'I told the whole story to my parents right away. "If I've
really killed Nixon," I said, "the Military Police must be after
me by now, for questioning." When I'd finished Mother
began to cry loudly, and her tears fell in a pool on the floor.
Father's face was pale; he kept staring into a corner of the
room.
'"Stop crying!" Father told Mother sharply. He acted as
though he were completely unconcerned, though of course
in reality this was not so at all. "Kazuo," he said, "this is
your business, and you alone must bear the responsibility for
what has happened .. . You must go at once to the firm, talk
to the directors, and decide what you want to do."
"I got up. I heard a car drawing up outside the door.
"They're here already," I thought.
'I went outside at once. There stood the two Johnnies, an
interpreter and a director of the firm. There was no sign of
any Military Policeman.
'"Kon-nichi-wa," said Johnny No. 1, and winked at me
... And the dark, heavy feeling that filled my heart was
blown away by this wink as if by a gust of wind.
'The interpreter explained that Nixon wasn't dead. His
left cheek had been ripped open by the sharp edge of the
shovel and had had to be stitched up. He was mad with rage,
and kept roaring "Jap! Jap!" So it would be dangerous for
me to go to work next day. To save the firm embarrassment it
would be highly advisable for me to ask to be dismissed at
once ... Because of his rough manners Nixon was extremely
unpopular with his fellow-soldiers too. The two Johnnies
had had a private conversation with him and had persuaded
him not to make a fuss about what had happened.
'The director concluded: "The incident has surprised us,
but we don't reproach you. You have shown that we Japanese
do not lack guts, even today. Fortunately, thanks to the action
of these two Australian soldiers, the incident will not become a
public scandal. You've been lucky. But you'd better be
more careful In future."
'They immediately drew up a letter, to be signed by myself,
requesting that I be dismissed. Father and Mother were very
happy when they heard that that would be the end of it, and
all I had to do was give up my job with the firm. They
thanked the two Johnnies over and over again.
'And so that's how I lost my third job.'
MISS WOODSTICK
1
Ichiro relates: 'Quite a while before the girl entered the
schoolroom, we could hear her coming.'
'Toe, toe, toe, re-echoed from the cement floor of the
Quonset hut where the Hiroshima Foreign Language School
held its classes in elementary English, three times a week.
Fujita, once a "suicide sailor", would dig me in the ribs and
murmur: "Attention - here conies your Miss Woodstick."'
Ichiro had naturally already heard the tapping of her
walking-stick upon the stone floor. Feigning indifference he
would gaze straight ahead, while hoping that she would
choose a seat immediately in front of his own, because then
her two thick plaits would be dangling immediately before
his eyes for one whole hour!
He no longer regretted the fact that Fujita, like himself a
fitter with the Saka Electricity Works, had persuaded him to
attend the language course. Ichiro had only given in to his
workmate's insistence because he knew that he must find
something to do in his free time, so that he might forget the
loss of his friends from Sunflower Castle. The first time he
entered the school building, and saw the Cross hanging
above the door, he nearly turned on his heel and walked
away again. He certainly had no intention of letting the
Christians catch him! After all it was 'Christian soldiers' who
had dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
At that time many people in Hiroshima felt this way.
Nevertheless the Christian missions in Japan, whether Protestant or Catholic, were enjoying a success in this immediate
postwar period such as they had never had before. Their
schools and their charitable institutions also attracted many
who were interested only in what they had to offer or hi
the chance for free schooling. Others came for even less
respectable reasons. They knew that the religious foundations
had money and goods to give away and they hoped that as
pupils of Christian schools they might get treatment almost
as preferential as that given to baptized 'Christians'. A
favourite hiding place for extreme nationalists and even for
war criminals on the run was the homes of Christian clergymen. Thus, for example, Flight Captain Kusuda, one of the
pilots who had taken part in the bombing of Pearl Harbor,
was for a time assistant (using a false name) to the best
known Protestant clergyman in Hiroshima.
Ichiro certainly had no wish to be one of those who
nowadays posed as more American than the Americans and
who did their best to ape the conquerors in speech, dress
and behaviour. On the other hand he did not like the coarse
way in which their enemies mocked the Christians, shouting
'Amen! Amen!' after them in the streets, and despising them
solely because of their beliefs. It was out of a spirit of
opposition to this opposition that he finally decided to attend
the Christian language school. He said to himself that it
could do no harm to find out what went on there.
Since the appearance of 'Miss Woodstick', Kawamoto had
attended the evening classes regularly. He had lacked the
courage actually to speak to his fellow-pupil. The nearest he
had dared come to approaching her was secretly to slip an
English-language newspaper on to the girl's desk, hoping
that she might take it home with her and then find the
unsigned message that he had laid between the pages.
After the lesson Ichiro remained seated at his desk,
pretending that he had something to write, and waiting to
see if 'she' would take the newspaper away with her. And it
happened: 'Miss Woodstick' leafed through the paper and
found the note: 'No longer needed. Don't hesitate to take it.'
'Good, good, it's come off,' thought Kawamoto, and he ran
off to catch Fujita, with whom he travelled back to Saka each
evening.
'Don't you even know her name?' asked the former
member of the Tokkotai (Suicide Patrol). For his taste,
Operation Woodstick was going rather too slowly.
'No idea. The teacher never calls us by our names.'
'But she comes to every lesson. Why don't you just go up
and speak to her?'
'She doesn't come when it's raining,' Kawamoto corrected
him. 'Probably because of her bad leg. I can hardly bear the
boredom of it when she's not there. And incidentally I think
we ought to refer to her as Geta-san (Miss Wooden Sandal).
They go clop-clop-clop too.'
'Why on earth?'
'"Miss Woodstick" doesn't sound nice. Poor girl, I wonder
what's wrong with her?'
'That I don't know. But there's one thing I do know.
You're in love with her.' And Fujita rolled his round, black
eyes most comically.
'Nonsense,' said Kawamoto, 'I've got no interest in girls
whatsoever.1
Before Tokie Ueraatsu's accident at the age of twelve, she
had wished to be a dancer. Her teachers, who had instructed
her in classic Japanese dancing, had all been enchanted by
her beauty, grace and powers of endurance. In 1943 Prince
Takematsu, a member of the Imperial Family, had visited
Hiroshima to take the salute at a march past of the fighting
forces and of the 'patriotic youth'. In honour of the occasion
the little girl had been given a new pair of sports shoes with
rubber soles. Just before the parade was due to begin it
occurred to her that she had left something behind in her
classroom. She ran up to the second floor, slipped, and fell
down the stairs. She was carried home with a complicated
fracture of the shin-bone.
Her father was a smith whose little workshop had expanded
during the war until it was a proper factory. He now spent a
fortune securing the best possible medical attention for his
daughter. For one of the many painful operations that
Tokie had to undergo he was charged a thousand yen. The
neighbours came crowding into his house to see, and if
possible to touch, the thousand-yen note with which he
proposed to pay the surgeon. For in that part of the city no
banknote of so high a denomination had ever before been
seen.
All the prayers, all the voluntary fasting on the part of the
Uematsu family (one sister swore to abstain from tea until
Tokie could walk again), proved unavailing. At last a professor
summoned from afar found a form of treatment which
promised to cure the young girl. It involved the wearing of a
plaster cast, reaching from her chest to her toes, for months
on end.
Tokie was just beginning to take a few cautious steps in
her plaster 'corset', and was outside her parents' home, when
the 'great lightning' struck.
Before she had really grasped what was happening she
heard, in her own words, 'a noise like a roar from ten
thousand throats. It was as if an entire mountain was
collapsing, and I was thrown to the ground in the garden.
My last thought before I lost consciousness was that my
bones would be broken again.'
Unfortunately her fears were correct. Another compound
fracture dispelled once and for all her hopes of eventual
recovery. During those August days of 1945 such doctors as
were still alive had far more urgent cases to deal with than
broken bones. So Tokie found herself compelled to be her
own doctor and nurse, helped only by one of her sisters. She
was successful in that she managed to close the wound, the
festering stopped and the bones grew together again, though
crookedly. But henceforth and for the rest of her life she
would be a cripple. At that time she wrote in her diary: 'I am
fourteen years old. I naturally do not know how long my life
will last, but I should prefer to skip the happy years, sixteen
and seventeen, and become an old lady of sixty to eighty at
once.'
The Uematsu factory, which was on the vine slopes of
Ozumachi, was completely destroyed by the Pikadon. For
some time her father could not find a job as a smith, for he
was suffering from the results of radiation and quite simply
lacked the physical strength needed to follow his old trade,
Mr and Mrs Uematsu began by running a stall in the
neighbourhood of the main railway station where they hawked
socks and underclothes. When Uematsu-san's health started
to improve, and he was able to touch his savings, he began to
speculate with raw materials in a small way. Finally he
invested his money in soap. Against cash payments he bought
soap in bulk, huge blocks that he himself cut up into normalsized cakes, which he then sold retail. On the occasion of
one such deal the soap was delivered to Mr Uematsu in huge
casks. When he opened them he found that they did not
contain the normal hard soap, as he had expected, but a thin
dirty grease that he could not dispose of. Since he had paid
cash for this, almost all that remained of Tokie's father's
fortune was wiped out by this swindle.
'I too must earn some money, so that our family shall have
enough to live on.'
Such was the conclusion that Tokie drew from the conversations she was forced to listen to when her parents came
home late at night after a day spent hunting for a little
money.
That was why the girl had determined to attend the
Christian language school at Matobacho and learn English.
She hoped that this would lead to her obtaining a secretarial
job.
But, as with Kawamoto, so Tokie had hesitated before
taking this step. Should she, ought she to, learn the language of
those people who had brought such misfortune on herself and
her family?
She asked her father for advice. He reminded his daughter
of a conversation they had had in the old and happy days,
when Tokie was a gay schoolgirl with a golden future before
her. She had been in the fourth form at that time, and one
day she had come home with a terrible great bruise on her
head and her clothes all torn. She had been fighting twenty
other children in defence of a little Korean boy, whom the
Japanese children were reducing to tears by shouting after
him that he smelt of garlic. Tokie had often seen them
tormenting the child, but on this occasion it had been too
much for her.
On that evening, long ago, Uematsu-san had said to his
favourite daughter:
'You know that a girl shouldn't fight. Please never do so
again. But so far as the cause went, you were quite right; no
human being is worse than another simply because he comes
from a foreign country.'
'And what I said to you then still applies today ...' Father
Uematsu said, thus ending their conversation about the
advisability of her taking English lessons. This was how
Tokie began to learn the language of the people whom she
had hated ever since the Pikadon.
In order to test himself and also Fujita's assertion that he
was in love with 'Miss Woodstick', Ichiro let the Electricity
Works send him by ship to Shimonoseki. He had already
made one such trip on the inland sea, to buy food for his
workmates in the islands. But this journey was a longer one,
to more distant places. It would keep him away from the
language school for at least a week. Would Miss Woodstick,
he wondered, notice his absence?
They were four men who set sail one stormy day on board
the motor-ship Kyoei Martt, They were to collect heatresistant tiles needed for the boiler room of the Electricity
Works.
Towards midday the sea grew calmer. In the dull light of a
late winter's day the ship was ploughing through the straits
of Miyajima. They saw the beautifully proportioned lacquerred Torii of the famous island shrine, outlined against an
almost violet sky. The wind was beginning to rise again,
whipping the sea until the waves were topped with a thousand
crowns of foam, a glassy meadow where the flowers bloomed
their finest in the moment that they broke asunder.
At last light the Kyoei Maru cast anchor in a harbour the
name of which Kawamoto did not know. The little houses
with their grass roofs were completely undamaged, nestling
peacefully between the bright beach and the tall, dark pines.
And this was a deeply moving sight to the boy whose eyes
had grown so accustomed to the ruins and shanty-towns of
Hiroshima that these now seemed to him normal landscapes.
He took out a little sketch-book which still contained some
drawings by Chibiko (skeletons of houses, shacks leaning
drunkenly this way and that, the windowless ruins of the
Nagarekawa Church) and drew the idyllic scene. Then by
the light of the cabin lamp he wrote a letter to his language
teacher, the Rev. Tsukushimo, to Fujita-san and finally,
after much hesitation and with a beating heart, to 'Miss
Woodstick'.
On the following day the little ship struck foul weather. It
had begun to rain as soon as they had left the island of Ube.
Then a stormy wind rose and within a few minutes it was
blowing a gale. The Kyoei Maru began to pitch badly. More
dangerous than the great waves were the black masses of
seaweed which the turbulent waters had torn loose from
their fastenings on the sea bed and had tossed up to the
storm-racked surface. They clutched at the screw, and
though the engine was given full power the clutches of the
blue-grey strands of weed seemed stronger than the steel
blades now fighting with all their strength to cut through
them.
Then the engine stopped altogether, and the little boat
was whisked about, helplessly, in circles. There was only one
hope left. Somebody on board must try to cut loose the
clutching seaweed. Held only by a narrow leather thong,
Kawamoto leaned overboard, so far that almost his entire
body was out of the boat, and tried to cut loose the green
hydra, using for this purpose a long Tobi - that same
instrument which, since the corpse-burning after the Pikadon,
had been so indelibly impressed upon his memory. A tremendous wave knocked him out. Now the captain himself took a
hand, and at last he succeeded in freeing the screw.
They fought their way on, through mountains of water and
the jungle tossed up from the seabed. Four times the screw
was caught, and four times Kawamoto thought that the end
had come.
In his thoughts he wrote many a farewell letter to Miss
Woodstick, and with silent lips he said much to her that he
had hitherto not even dared to say to himself. When at long
last they reached the harbour of Onada, and before he had
even got out of his wet clothes, Ichiro scribbled a few lines to
his beloved far away. Yet these contained no word of all that
had passed through his mind when his life was in mortal
peril.
He addressed this note to: 'The Young Lady with the
Beautiful Pinewood Stick, care of the Foreign Language
School, Hiroshima'.
When Ichiro Kawamoto was home again and entered the
school for the first time since his journey, Miss Woodstick
gave no sign to show whether or not she had received his note.
Though the 'bold adventurer' was certainly disappointed by
this, his feeling of relief was almost stronger. With any luck
the letter had gone astray! For he feared that the girl of
his choice might have been offended by his unsolicited
confidences, and to punish him might stop coming to the
class. Gradually this hope that the postal service had let him
down became a certainty. For 'she' appeared at the school
with precisely the same regularity as before, and remained
just as remote towards him as she had always done.
Now one evening Tokie had indeed found a postcard on
her desk, which was entirely covered with English letters.
Beneath these was a pretty drawing of a harbour at sunset.
And the card was signed: Ichiro Kawamoto.
'At the time I had no idea who this could be,' Tokie has
told me, 'and unfortunately I must now admit that I failed to
understand one single word of his English. 1 hunted in my
English-Japanese dictionary but could not find one of the
collection of foreign letters. And I wanted so much to know
what was actually written on the card! So I went to our
teacher and asked him: "Sensei, would you please translate
this for me?"
'The teacher looked at the card for a moment and then
broke into a loud laugh.
' "Uematsu-san, do you really mean to say that you can't
read this on your own?"
'"No, I can't. But I'll try to do better, and make more
progress."
"Ha, ha! This letter is in Japanese, only written in English
characters."'
Now, by deciphering the foreign symbols, Tokie could at
last discover what the meaning of the note was. But who was
this Ichiro Kawamoto? He must be the same person who left
newspapers on her desk with such regularity. Once or twice
she had found sweets there too. But since the teacher never
addressed his pupils by name during the classes, and since she
was t'oo shy to ask him for help again, Miss Woodstick had to
rely on guesswork.
'At the end of each lesson,' Tokie says, 'two of the students
always remained behind to tidy up. One of the two was in the
habit of singing at the top of his voice - much too loud -and
also ran about a lot, to attract attention. The other worked in
silence and seemed to enjoy it. It became gradually clear to me
that Kawamoto-san must be the noisy one, and that he was
trying to attract my attention by his loud singing.
'At that time besides going to school I began to attend the
Christian religious services. I there learned that the word God
is to be found in the Bible. This was, for me, like rain falling
on to parched soil. The word God soaked into my being . . . I
made up my mind to devote my life to the faith, and I asked
the teacher if I might be baptized. In addition to myself there
were five others for baptism.
'Then one day the cheerful singer came up to me and
pressed a note into my hand. It read: "Try to learn these words
for your baptism. Kawamoto."
'The one who had handed me the note said: "Ichiro asked
me to give it to you."
'It was like a light being turned on. I'd been wrong. He
wasn't Kawamoto. Kawamoto was the other one, the still
waters that run deep.'
On one of the last days of November the clergyman had said to
all the students of the language class: 'If any of you wishes to
be baptized at Christmas you can apply now.*
'What does "baptized" actually mean?' Kawamoto asked
his friend Fujita.
'Well, it means becoming a Christian,1 replied Fujita, who
was never a man to waste words.
Apart from vague childhood memories of Peruvian altars
decked with gold, and occasional church attendances on
Sunday in Hiroshima - undertaken principally in order that
he might admire Miss Woodstick - Ichiro at that time knew
for all intents and purposes nothing about Christianity.
Nevertheless, he made up his mind to offer himself as a
candidate for baptism. He himself, writing about this at a
later date, has said:
'My motive in doing so was at that time less that of
faith than of an unspecified feeling. For I was looking for
responsibility. And I thought that if ever I should find myself
in a tricky, slippery situation, the fact that I had been baptized
would act as a sort of barrier, an invisible promise you might
say, a contract that I would be bound by. I hasten to add that it
was not some deep idea within the Christian teaching that
particularly moved and attacked me. If the evening class had
happened to belong to some altogether different religious
community, with other ideas, I should probably have adhered
to this sect instead.'
On the Sunday before Christmas six candidates for baptism
met in the corrugated iron church of Matobacho immediately
behind the Hiroshima railway station. It was bitterly cold.
Once again persons unknown had, during the night, cut the
expensive and almost irreplaceable glass out of the windows.
The wind blew through the building with such force that the
candles were being constantly extinguished.
Apart from Ichiro Kawamoto the other candidates were: a
man of sixty by the name of Nishikawa, who, as he said, had
finally given in to his wife's insistence 'in order that he might
have a little peace and quiet in the house'; Miyake, a student
at Tokyo University; Okamoto, who was studying at the
Sanyo Agricultural College; Fujita, the former 'suicide sailor';
and Miss Woodstick.
The six candidates were led in through the left-hand side
door. They went right up to the altar, beside which stood a
large, decorated Christmas tree.
Now they were told to kneel. But little Tokie could not
bend her crippled leg.
Ichiro, who was standing on her left, whispered: 'Shall I
fetch you the little chair from the children's corner?'
This was the first time that he had ever addressed her
directly.
'Please don't bother,' the girl whispered back. She was so
confused that she could scarcely utter the words of the
baptism service, which she had learned by heart.
When it was all over and the new converts were to have a
meal together, it was discovered mat Tokie had disappeared.
They looked for her everywhere. Finally it came out that she
had told someone she must go home at once.
Ichiro was unable to enjoy the baptismal dinner, even
though it was the best food that had been set before him in
years. He kept repeating to himself: 'Perhaps I offended her
when I thrust my offer of help on her.'
Only much later did Ichiro learn why Miss Woodstick had
run away. That a stranger should speak to her in such
friendly terms, that a man should bother about her, the
cripple, fate's outcast, at all, had moved her deeply. She had
long ago resigned herself to what she believed to be her
destiny and was prepared to live a life without friendship or
love. And now? Did not her whole future look quite altered?
Tokie wished to think this over in peace and undisturbed.
But first she must collect herself.
Immediately behind the church there was a cinema. This
was the same cinema to which Ichiro had taken his friends
from Sunflower Castle to see the Chaplin film. Tokie bought a
ticket and found a seat in the darkened hall.
'I can still remember what the film was called. It was as if it
wanted to mock me, because its title was First Lerve. But
what the story was about, I couldn't say. During the two
hours I sat there, there was far too much going through my
mind.'
The City of Peace
THE INDIVIDUALISTS
1
'Hallelujah!' The voice was outside, but it was clearly audible
within Tokie’s room.
'Your telegram boy is there again,' her older sister mocked
her. 'Why don't you tell him to come into the house for
once?'
Miss Woodstick limped to the door. Ichiro Kawamoto was
standing in the entrance. As happened each day, he had
brought a little present for Tokie. And besides that, of
course, a letter. For they had been writing to each other
every day for some time now. But since the post usually took
more than one day to deliver a letter, they exchanged the
letters they had written before they said good-bye.
Since the baptism Tokie had given up coming to school.
One day Ichiro had mastered his shyness and had called on
her. As a pretext he had brought with him the English
Language Bible which, after endless delay, had at last been
issued to all the pupils of the Foreign Language School. He
said that, as he happened to be passing his former schoolmate's house, he had thought he would just drop it in, had
excused himself, and had pretended that he intended to
leave at once. But although the unexpected visit had thrown
Tokie into a real state of confusion, she still had enough
presence of mind not to let her visitor depart immediately,
and she engaged him in conversation.
Since that day much had resulted from this brief conversation outside her front door. Ichiro now came to see her
almost every evening after he had finished work. But it had
taken one whole month before he set foot across her threshold for the first time. 'I should not care to cause your family
any embarrassment/ Ichiro had said, by way of excuse. His
sensitivity was such that he felt immediately how embarrassing
it must be for the once wealthy Uematsu family to be seen
by a stranger in their present poverty.
The family's financial position had once again deteriorated
since the beginning of 1948. 'It's true that my sister was
earning a little money with her sewing-machine,1 Tokie
recalls, 'but everything that Father and Mother tried, in
order to get on their feet professionally once again, turned
out badly. We had potatoes, and only potatoes, to eat, day
after day. For a change we made ourselves a sort of caramel,
using ordinary domestic sugar. Sometimes I managed to save
my share of the caramel, which I could exchange for books.'
When for the first time there was a little money in the
home Tokie's sister invited the shy Ichiro to dinner. A table
was laid in the hall, with two plates, two spoons and between
them a vase containing a single bough of blossom. But Miss
Woodstick was so overwhelmed to be dining alone with a
'strange man' that she could scarcely swallow a mouthful of
the wheat curry.
'That evening I wrote in my diary: "Thank you, Nesan
(elder sister)!"' Tokie relates. The rest of the family left the
house to go for a walk, leaving us two alone together. Ichiro
asked me: "Do you write in your diary every day?" "Yes,
every day," I replied. "Could you show it to your Niichan
(brother)?" "Well, yes . . . I could give it you to read. But if I
do, then you must let me see yours in exchange.. ." Ichiro
said: "I should think that over. But of course you can read
my diary."'
Before Tokie was prepared to hand over her diary, she
had to correct it. 'Because the name Ichiro-san occurred in it
far too often,' she says. *So I couldn't show it to him the
way it was. At this time my thoughts were almost entirely
preoccupied with Ichiro. But unfortunately I would never be
able to tell him this. A person like me, with this crippled leg what business had I with emotions of love? I was convinced
that Ichiro-san must surely despise me if he even so much as
suspected such a thing!'
It was a more than normal shyness that held Kawamoto
back from simply telling Miss Woodstick that he was in love
with her; and it was more than this feeling of bodily inferiority
and of being no longer worthy of consideration as a woman
that led Tokie to hide her true feelings from Ichiro. Both
were suffering from the deep-seated after-effects of a fear of
life and a weariness with living which had affected the
inhabitants of Hiroshima after the Pikadon. This had been
plainly visible on the survivors' faces, and the doctors had
given it the name of Muyoku-ganbo, or 'no more will'. If in
addition to the hundreds of scientific papers that now exist
dealing with the physical consequences of the atomic bombing
there were an equivalent number concerning its psychological
effects, it would be apparent that this 'fear of love' which
was to be seen in the remarkable reticence and generally
peculiar behaviour of our two young people was typical of
countless people in Hiroshima at this time.
The sociologist Nakano, Professor at Hiroshima University,
has in recent years devoted particular attention to the
orphans of the bombing who have subsequently reached
marriageable age. He has established that a fear of forming
attachments and of producing children of their own is
overwhelmingly great among the majority of these young
people. He explicitly connects this with the fear of possible
radiation damage to the genes and of misbirths. Yet in reality
the cause of this anxiety seems to be even deeper.
Ichiro Kawamoto and Tokie Uematsu - and countless
other survivors like them - had been through more than a
bombing: they had experienced 'the end of the world'.
This shock must have affected one of humanity's most
fundamental urges, namely the will to conceive and give
birth to children and, through them, to ensure one's own
continuity.
After his baptism Kawamoto had begun to attend regularly
the meetings and Bible classes of the Young Men's Christian
Association. Soon after this he took on the telling of fairy
tales and other stories to young children, illustrating these
with funny drawings which he inserted into a wooden frame.
Tokie helped him with these weekly Kami-shibai (paper
shows). And in his story-telling Ichiro was so good at
imitating the noises made by all die animals who figured in
them that he soon enjoyed a sort of fame among the children
who lived in and about Hiroshima.
Performances were soon being held in Saka, as well as in
the orphanage 'Shimei-gakuen '. The children ran up to him
as they did to no other grown-up, and many parents asked
the uneducated day-labourer, Kawamoto, to look after their
offspring. Though they were all Buddhists they did not object
when he followed his fairy tales with a Bible class.
On the other hand when Ichiro and his brother-in -baptism
Fujita wished to practise the Christian hymns, they had to do
this in a distant corner of the works where their singing
could not be heard. For their workmates in the factory
maintained that class-conscious members of the proletariat
could never be Christians and mocked them accordingly.
"Jesus intervened on behalf of the poor and against the
rich,' Kawamoto would say, defending his faith. 'And another
thing. He also preached: "Love your enemies." You hate too
much, and always pretend that you know best.'
However, in order to show that a man could be simultaneously both a Christian and a trade unionist, from now on
Ichiro took an active part in the struggle for higher wages
and against the constant cutting down of those democratic
rights which were theoretically guaranteed by the new constitution. In the third year of peace the internal political situation
in Japan had taken a turn for the worse. The continuing food
shortage, rising prices and inflation had led to repeated
struggles for increased wages; demonstrations and strikes
were the order of the day, and the industries of Hiroshima,
only now beginning to get on their feet again, were not
spared these. At this time delegation after delegation of
workers marched to the City Hall, to protest against the
galloping devaluation of the currency. Mayor Hamai reports:
'From early morning till evening - and often until late into
the night - these delegations would come, and would force
their way into my very office. On many days this happened
more than one hundred times, and we really could not get on
with our work at all. They produced demands which a local
authority such as ours was quite incapable of meeting. In
exceptional cases men would leap on to my desk, without
even removing their shoes, and would attempt to make
speeches ...'
In order to control political agitation throughout the entire
country, Tokyo decreed a 'Law for Securing Public Order',
which gave the police increased powers and made demonstrations illegal unless prior notice had been given. The
detailed implementation of these exceptional measures was
left to the discretion of the local authorities; significantly
enough this decree was not submitted to the Japanese
Parliament for its approval.
The Mayor of Hiroshima was not himself a party man, but in
this matter he shared the point of view of the left-wing
parties, which not only maintained that such political
oppression must fail as a cure for social maladies, but also
declared that the decree was directly contrary to the principles of
freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of
assembly as guaranteed in the new constitution. Hamai was
firmly convinced that the outbreak of demonstrations such as
those from which he himself suffered was only a temporary,
postwar nuisance, whereas the 'Security Law', were it to be
enforced, must deal a severe blow to the very foundations of
die democratic fabric that was just beginning to assume a
certain solidity. Furthermore, he believed that this law could
easily be misused as a pretext for further acts of political
oppression.
To worried workers who protested to him about this
controversial law Hamai declared: 'I don't intend to enforce
decrees of this sort here in Hiroshima. But I am hoping that
you will display self-discipline.' Shortly after this the city's
Chief Magistrate was summoned to the headquarters of the
Occupying Powers in Kure. The authorities there were
extremely annoyed by his reluctance to act in the spirit of the
new law. In almost all other Japanese cities the Mayor and
council had not hesitated to obey the instructions they had
received from 'higher up'.
Hamai dug his toes in. 'If I should obey you, this would
mean that I was damaging our new constitution,' he declared.
'Mr Mayor,' replied the American officer, 'leading
Japanese legal experts have pronounced this law to be
perfectly constitutional. Do you imagine that a simple Mayor is
entitled to have his own opinion about such a matter?'
'That is a matter of interpretation. In any event a local
authority cannot simply authorize such far-reaching measures. If such a law is really needed, then it should be debated
by all the people's representatives in a proper atmosphere of
calm and with due respect for the constitution.'
With an ominously threatening remark - 'Please think the
matter over carefully once again!' - the Mayor of Hiroshima's
interview ended. The pressure from 'on high' did not let up
from then on. Hamai was summoned more than once to
Kure and finally felt himself compelled to work out a
compromise; this took the form of a proposal that, whereas
the citizens would be bound to inform the authorities of any
planned demonstrations, the authorities for their part would
not have the right to forbid it.
A few days later Hamai, together with the Chairman of
the Municipal Council, Nitoguri, was summoned to the office of
Military Government, located in the Provincial Prefecture
Building in Hiroshima. There he met a Captain Caswell,
who was introduced to him as a legal expert.
'I should like to repeat to you, word for word, what my
superiors wish me to say to you,' the officer began. 'My
commanding officer is extraordinarily disappointed by the
Mayor's interpretation of the Security Law. The most important
portions of that law are not being enforced at all. We
therefore are in doubt as to the Mayor's goodwill.'
When the two representatives of Hiroshima remained
silent, Captain Caswell went on: 'I have simply repeated
what my commanding officer told me to say.'
With the utmost dignity Mayor Hamai now said: 'We have
no other wish than to preserve the democratic institutions
that have been bestowed upon us. We deeply regret that our
sincerity should be called in question.'
The foreign captain hesitated a moment before answering,
then he spoke slowly and hi a very low voice: 'I am only the
mouthpiece for my superior officer, and I have no choice but
to obey his instructions. My personal view, Mr Mayor, is that
you are right. But in view of the way matters stand at present
I have no alternative: I must obey my commanding officer's
orders.'
For a few days Hamai was engaged in a silent, internal
struggle with his conscience. Should he continue to resist, or
not? On the one hand he had accepted certain responsibilities
towards the workers which he had no wish to ignore, for he
shared their apprehensions. On the other, it was clear to
Hamai that if he were to be adamant in his attitude there
would be little chance of his obtaining help for Hiroshima
from the Tokyo authorities in days to come.
So he decided to give in and was even compelled himself
to present the proposal for such a 'Security Law' to the
Municipal Assembly. To save his face he had at last added a
somewhat weak clause to the bill, whereby public demonstrations would 'be permitted whenever possible'.
But it soon became apparent how easy it was in practice to
use the 'rubber stamp law' to ban all forms of public
assembly. For a long time part of the Hiroshima working
class would not forgive Hamai for having given way in this
matter.
Hamai learned later that the Mayor of Hakodate, confronted with the same dilemma as himself, had resisted to
the end and had never given in. And he admits today: 'So I
felt bitterly that I had acted like a coward.'
In other matters too, more important and with greater
significance for the future, Hamai felt himself forced to act
against his better judgement at almost this same time. As
early as mid-1947 a young American scientist by the name of
Lieutenant Neel had come to see him, accompanied by a
Japanese doctor named Takeshima. Neel had informed him
that the American Government, in co-operation with the
Japanese authorities, proposed to set up a research institute
in Hiroshima to study the after-effects on health of the
dropping of the atomic bomb. Although in almost all the
official reports and inspired newspaper articles of that time
the assertion was repeatedly made that the dropping of the
two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and on Nagasaki had
produced no enduring ill-effects on the survivors' health, it
was well known in Hiroshima - where even the strictest
censorship imposed by the Occupying Powers could not,
after all, render invisible what all eyes might see - that a
very large number of men, women and even children were
suffering from various complaints which were lumped
together in the popular mind and were collectively referred
to as 'the atomic sickness'.
Mayor Hamai was therefore highly pleased to learn that
the Americans were now going to look after these sick
persons, and he immediately told the Construction Office to
find the most suitable possible spot for the new clinic.
It was proposed that the Research Institute should be built in
Koshamochi, near the city centre and on the spot where the
garrison's powder magazine had stood before the Pikadon. At
first this proposal was greeted with genuine approval. The
clinic would then be within easy reach of all. Furthermore, it
was seen as an impressive symbolic gesture that at the very
spot where an arsenal of war material once had stood there
should now be an Institute devoted to healing the wounds
caused by war,
The approval of the higher American authorities had still
to be obtained, but this was more or less taken for granted.
Then one day an American officer came to see Mayor
Hamai, and told him that the government could not accept
this site: a building erected here, he said, might well be
damaged by water if there were another flood such as had
devastated Hiroshima in September 1945. The irreplaceable
documents and laboratory material that the clinic would
contain would be too valuable for any such risk to be
tolerable. As a 'proof of this argument the officer in question
had brought with him a map of Hiroshima. This, according
to Hamai, must have been very old, for the river's delta,
which had been extensively built over for decades, was shown
on it as forming part of the open sea.
In order to be on the safe side, therefore, the American
insisted that a new site be selected on higher ground. He
proposed as a suitable location the Hijiyama Hill, which rises
steeply on the western outskirts of the city.
From the very first Hamai was strongly opposed to this
suggestion. He said: 'On this hill there is a park for which
my fellow-citizens cherish particularly strong emotions. For
in its northern sector there once stood the Emperor Meiji's
headquarters, when he resided in Hiroshima. Since that date
this has been regarded by us as hallowed ground. In the
southern part of the park there is an old military cemetery.
We Japanese have feelings of especial respect for the graves of
our warriors. If you were to put your building on either of
these sites you would, from the very beginning, antagonize
the inhabitants.'
In an attempt to make the Americans alter their plans, the
Mayor took them to the Futaba Hill, which is no great
distance from Hiroshima, and also showed them Yoshida,
another district quite free from the danger of flooding. But
these gentlemen showed less and less inclination to change
the site that they had chosen. Finally Hamai said to them, in
terms that brooked no misunderstanding: (I am here as the
representative of my fellow-citizens, and I know that they
will never approve a plan such as yours. Therefore I cannot
agree to your proposals. Please don't imagine I am simply
being stubborn and unco-operative. I am convinced that the
work of your Institute will be of very great importance, but
you will only succeed in achieving what you have in mind if
the people of Hiroshima are ready to work with you of their
own free will.'
This seemed to put an end to the argument, at least for
the time being, and early in 1948 the ABCC (Atomic Bomb
Casualty Commission) occupied provisional offices in what
had previously been the Hall of Triumph in Ujina harbour.
At the end of December 1948, when Hamai had almost
forgotten his successful struggle to save Hijiyama Park, he
suddenly received a visit from the head of the Department of
Health and Public Welfare in General MacArthur's 'cabinet'.
This officer demanded once again that the Mayor of Hiroshima hand over the park to the ABCC. When Hamai
refused to do this, repeating all his original remarks about
the inadvisability of such an action, his visitor informed him
that he already had in his pocket the approval of the Japanese
Government, and that since the land in question was national
property, the city could no longer refuse its consent.
Early in 1949 another visitor came to see Hamai, this time
from the Japanese Ministry of Welfare, who lectured the
stubborn Mayor of Hiroshima in the following terms: 'If you
continue to make difficulties, the Government will find itself
in a most disagreeable position. This would not only be
prejudicial to the nation as a whole, but would also cause
harm to your city itself.'
This argument proved decisive. The old military cemetery
had to be moved, so that a site could be found for the new
clinic. How justified Mayor Haraai's objections to this had
been were to be shown in the years that followed.
In the arguments about the 'Public Security Law1 and the
site for the ABCC Clinic, Shinzo Hamai would presumably
have followed a less conciliatory line, if he had not hoped
that by giving way in these matters he might save a project
which he had very much at heart. This concerned a special
law which should finally help Hiroshima out of its financially
hopeless situation. In order to ensure the passage of such a
bill in Tokyo, the Mayor needed a great measure of goodwill
in the Dai-Ichi, MacArthur's headquarters, as well as in the
councils of the Liberal-Democratic Party, which formed the
majority and which was committed one hundred per cent to
the Americans' policy.
In April of 1948 a 'League' had been created in Hiroshima,
containing representatives of every section of society, with
the sole purpose of obtaining from the authorities in Tokyo a
special increase in the Reconstruction Grant for the atombombed city. But though members of their "People's Lobby'
had traveDed in their hundreds to Tokyo and had submitted
appeal after appeal in the hope of thus bringing pressure to
bear on the ministries responsible, when the budget for the
current year was published there was no special increase to
Hiroshima's grant, which remained fixed at the usual figure.
When Mayor Hamai thereupon threatened to resign, his
political friends advised him to make the Help Hiroshima,
cause the basis for a bill to be submitted to the Japanese
Parliament. Only if the representatives decided by a majority
vote that Hiroshima should be given preferential treatment,
in the form of credits for purposes of reconstruction, was
there any chance of securing special financial assistance for
the city.
With this object in view Hamai had drafted a lengthy
petition, in which he spoke of the 'historical significance of
Hiroshima's catastrophe' and suggested that great advantages
would accrue to the country as a whole if one of Japan's
cities were to be officially designated a 'Mecca of Peace'.
This must lead not only to an increased awareness all over
the world of Japan's desire for peace, but should also prove
advantageous to the Japanese economy as a whole in that it
would attract a stream of tourists from every land. Finally and here we can detect a remnant of the dreams of the
Reconstruction Committee and the Major Jarvis's high-flying
plans - such an 'ideal modern city' could serve as a model
for all the other towns of Japan.
Sickness prevented Hamai from personally circulating the
petition (which was explicitly entitled Petition for an Integral
Reconstruction Policy with regard to the Atom Bomb Victims of
Hiroshima) in the corridors of the Parliament Building in
November 1948, as planned. But the delay proved to be
wholly advantageous. The elections of January 1949 showed a
marked swing to the left. The Government party, with a
decreased majority, now felt that if it were to regain the
ground it had lost, it must henceforth devote more attention
to measures designed to win popular support. Therefore
when Hamai arrived in Tokyo in February 1949, he was
immediately received with unexpected friendliness by the
deputies of the majority party. Both in the Upper and the
Lower House he had no trouble in finding deputies prepared to
sponsor such a bill. At the same time the responsible
Ministers announced that they were prepared to set up a
special committee at once, to work out a five-year plan for
the reconstruction of Hiroshima.
The Mayor took it upon himself to obtain the approval of
the Occupying Authorities, which was essential if his hopes
were to be realized. Accompanied by Deputy Takizo Matsumoto, who had lived for many years in the United States,
and by Nitoguri, the Chairman of the Hiroshima Council,
Hamai called on Mr Williams, MacArthur's liaison man with
the representatives of the Japanese people. After Matsumoto
had given a brief description of the essentials, the American
reached for the English translation of the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial City Construction Bill and read the draft with extreme
care and very slowly.
Time seemed to stand still while Williams 'attentively and
without the flicker of an eyeball' studied the document. He
spoke no word, nor was it possible to judge from his
expression whether or not he approved of what he read. The
fact that the Occupying Powers' censorship had hitherto
done everything in its power to blot out the memory of
Hiroshima from the public's conscience indicated that the
approval was unlikely to be forthcoming. On the other hand
MacArthur's published statement of 6 August 1947, on the
occasion of the first 'Peace Festival', and the world-wide
applause that this had received, at least seemed to indicate the
possibility that the Americans would not refuse permission.
Hamai recalls the almost intolerable suspense as the
minutes ticked by while he waited in the American official's
office: 'I felt unwell. I stared at him, in the hope of discovering
what his reactions were. If he were to say "No" then our
project was doomed in Parliament. But when at last he raised
his eyes from the paper before him, he said: "This is
wonderful! It will be important politically both internally and
externally. You must do your best to make sure that this bill is
debated and passed at once. As soon as the representatives of
Parliament are ready to discuss the bill with me, I'll take it to
General MacArthur and get his approval.'"
The three Japanese were overjoyed, and shook one another
by the hand. As they emerged from the headquarters the
Chairman of the City Council repeated over and over again:
'It's in the bag! It's in the bag! Now the draft bill is bound to
be passed!'
And indeed the idea that Hiroshima deserved especial
treatment among war-damaged cities now and at last seemed to
be accepted in Parliament. Even Prime Minister Yoshida,
whose attitude up to now had been one of reserve - neither
he nor any of his predecessors had hitherto found the time
to visit the atom-bombed city - said to the Mayor: 'Naturally
we'll do something for you. I'm always repeating, when
dealing with representatives of the Allies: "Talk as you will
about your love of humanity, the Hiroshima incident makes
you appear in an altogether different light." Then they
usually change the conversation, saying: "We'd rather not
talk about Ma/!"'
So at long last, on 10 and 11 May 1949, the Japanese
Parliament finally passed the law which declared officially
that Hiroshima was a 'City of Peace'. Simultaneously not
only were large special grants assured for the city, but also
one of two great plots of land which had hitherto belonged to
the military was now legally returned to the city.
At the last moment an unforeseen difficulty had indeed
arisen which nearly halted the passage of the new bill. The
Nagasaki deputies had suddenly intervened to say that their
city, as the second victim of the atomic bomb, should be
given treatment at least as favourable as that now being
bestowed upon Hiroshima, and should also be designated a
'Mecca of Peace*. Therefore a Reconstruction Act for Hiroshima
and Nagasaki should replace the present bill at once. Were
this not done, all the Liberal-Democratic deputies representing
the Nagasaki district were determined to resign from the
Government party. Bamboku Ohno, one of the sponsors of
the Hiroshima Act, was so disgusted that he shouted at the
Nagasaki deputies: 'Where else in the world are politics
played like this? It's not possible to prepare a substantial
meal for someone else and then, when it's all ready, to say:
"We want to eat it too."'
A compromise solution was worked out in great haste.
Nagasaki was honoured with the title of 'City of International
Culture'. For the rest, the second atom-bombed city received
only a third of the meal that had been cooked up in the
party-political kitchen.
The population of Hiroshima's initial joy at the assurance
of future grants was soon to be dampened by another
occurrence.
An economic adviser to the United States Government by
the name of Joseph Dodge had been sent to Japan. He was
instructed to give his views as to what should be done to
combat inflation, and early in June he published his report.
In this he proposed that in order to get the Japanese economy
on a sound basis there must be a drastic and immediate
reduction in State subsidies, a general credit squeeze, and a
rationalization of industry. This meant that the five-year plan
for the industrial reconstruction of Japan, only begun the
previous year, would be set aside for the time being, and in
Hiroshima it was generally believed that the new reconstruction
plan for the city, so recently and joyously inaugurated, would
suffer the same fate. This fear was reinforced by the fact that
the over-cautious politicians who had drafted the bill had
avoided specifying the size of the grant that the State would be
giving to the 'City of Peace'.
As a result of the 'Dodge Plan' over two thousand workers
at Hiroshima's second largest factory, the Nippon Seiko Co,
(the Nippon Steel Works), were dismissed in mid-June 1949;
for the railway administration had cancelled for the time
being its entire order for railway lines, previously placed with
this company.
All the trade unions in the Hiroshima district protested at
once against these dismissals. Since their demands failed to
obtain the men's re-employment, a general strike was organized
for all Hiroshimu and the surrounding area.
The employees of the Saka Electricity Works were among
those who voted in favour of this protest strike, and they sent
all their union members to join in one of the big demonstrations which took place on 15 June in front of the buildings
of the Nippon Steel Works. This was the biggest and most
excited demonstration that had so far taken place. Ichiro
Kawamoto, who carried the banner of his work group, was
there.
When the Saka delegation marched in, a great bell was
rung and they were greeted by the applause of thousands of
clapping hands.
But soon the police too began to arrive, in trucks. A
communication from the Governor of Hiroshima Province,
Kusunose, was read aloud. He ordered the immediate dispersal
of the protest meeting. Amidst all the shouting of slogans, the
singing and the chanting, few of the demonstrators heard the
Governor's message. As dusk fell, clouds of mosquitoes
settled on the crowd and began to sting them. The men
would not budge, however, and so arranged themselves that
those who were physically the strongest, who happened to be
the members of the Korean Trade Union, occupied and
held the entrance gate to the mills.
Alarm bells roused the demonstrators from their halfsleep. 'The police are attacking! The police are attacking!'
And indeed in the flickering light cast by the torches it was
now possible to make out bodies of men in uniform marching
towards the mill. But they too were carrying banners and
placards. Then it turned out that they were not the police
but the railwaymen, who could only now join the demonstration, their day's work completed.
The police waited until dawn. Only when they believed
the demonstrators to be sufficiently tired and hungry did
they attack, with the purpose of 'cleaning up' the area around
the steel mills. They had no trouble storming the barricade
which had been erected behind the back entrance to the
building. What happened next has been described by Kawamoto in the following words:
'I heard someone giving them an order in a sharp voice of
command: "Forward!" We were standing in close formation,
one beside the other, our arms linked, each of us gripping
his neighbour's belt, and we were singing so loudly that you
could hardly hear your own voice. They came towards us.
Cries of "Robbers! Dogs!" were drawing closer and closer.
'I hid my union banner, but unfortunately I forgot to put
away my fountain-pen, which was in the inside pocket of my
coat. By now they had broken through the rank in front of us
and we were face to face with the police. They struck at our
arms with their truncheons, and poked us in the chest to
make us let go of one another, but we only clung together all
the tighter ... Suddenly a detective snatched my fountainpen from my pocket and shouted at me: "If you want it back,
come and get it!" I simply shook my head, to let him see that I
wasn't falling for a trick like that. So he deliberately broke
my pen in two in front of my eyes, and threw the two halves
with all his strength straight at my head.
'Fortunately while we were waiting I had stuffed my cap
with grass. So I wasn't knocked unconscious, but only
deafened. When I had quite come to myself again I hurried
towards the entrance gate, where the fight was still going on. A
majestic group of Himalayan cypresses stood there, gazing
down with evident contempt upon the wild free-for-all that
was taking place beneath their boughs. I threw myself into
the next intact line of our people, to strengthen them. But
this rank too was broken through.
'A gang of policemen knocked me down and trampled on
me. I thought I must surely suffocate. Instinctively I grabbed
for the leather strap of one of the policemen's helmets. He
yelled at me: "This is resistance to the forces of public
order!" But before he could hit me, two or three of my
comrades had pushed him aside and had carried me out
through the gate.
'Gradually it began to calm down all around us. The red
flag that had waved from the top of the cypresses was
crumbling in flames. A policeman had climbed up and set
fire to it. We now all stood there, in silence, gazing up into
the sky, until the last puff of smoke had blown away ...
*I was wounded in the chest. Before going to the demonstration I had bought myself a little copper crucifix. When
they hit me with their truncheons they bent the crucifix,
which became embedded in my flesh.'
Kawamoto says that never before that morning of defeat
had he felt such solidarity with his fellow-workers, nor been
aware of the need for common resistance. Nevertheless - or,
as he would put it, precisely for that reason - he attended
evensong in his church that evening, and attempted to explain
to the other members of his congregation why the strikers'
demands were justified. 'Then I prayed for the salvation of
the workers,' Ichiro relates. 'But no other members of the
congregation would join me in this prayer.'
Kawamoto was profoundly disappointed by the attitude of
his Church. 'I continued to attend the religious services
regularly, but I began to have doubts,' he has told me. 'For I
was so terribly discouraged by the indifference of my fellowChristians.'
This impression was reinforced by a second 'betrayal' on
the part of his religious community - for so did it appear in
Ichiro's eyes. This occurred when the released Japanese
prisoners of war were passing through Hiroshima.
At this time the Russians were beginning to repatriate the
survivors from their prison camps, Japanese soldiers captured
during the last few days of the war. The members of the
Matobacho Church had originally intended to provide
refreshments for these men during the brief period that they
would have to spend in Hiroshima station. But then the
newspapers announced that these men, who had spent four
years in Siberia behind barbed wire, had astonished everyone
on landing in Japan by announcing that they had become
Communists in the prison camps. On hearing this, the
churches immediately lost all interest in the home-comers.
When, towards midnight, the train carrying the repatriated
men steamed into Hiroshima station, the platform was
covered with red flags. Despite the lateness of the hour
hundreds had turned out, and now, together with the
emaciated and obviously deeply-moved soldiers, they all sang
the International.
Kawamoto was much impressed by this scene, and deeply
regretted that the other members of his church were not
there to see it with him.
'If you withdraw into your oyster shells,' he said to them
bitterly, 'you'll never be able to share your love with others!
The Church must never be solely for itself, but must always
stand on the side of the oppressed. Why did you not preach
the words of Christ to them? He was prepared to preach to
robbers, after all!'
After this fresh disappointment Kawamoto began to
wonder seriously, and for the first time, whether he should
not himself become a Communist. For a long time they had
been after him. Ichiro had come to the conclusion that the
Communists he knew were superior as human beings to the
Christians and the Socialists, because each of them was
ready to sacrifice all his personal interests for the sake of
their organized workers' movement. On the other hand their
spiritual arrogance repelled him. They thought that they alone
knew all the answers, and anyone who was not prepared, as
were they, to follow absolutely a devious and constantly
changing Tarty Line* they dismissed with indignation, or at
best contempt.
These observations were enough to prevent Kawamoto
from joining the Communists at his factory. He noted in his
diary at this time the following conviction: 'The Communists
cannot stand any criticism of Soviet Russia, just as is the
case with the Christians and America.' A few days later
Kawamoto had an experience which, after all his disappointments, filled him with new hope. This happened in July of
1949, during the celebrations that marked the passage of the
law according to which Hiroshima would be declared the
'Mecca of Peace'.
These opened with the singing of the new 'Peace Song',
which henceforth would be the official festival hymn and
would be sung each year on 6 August. It was far too 'tame'
for Kawamoto's taste, for the text never once included the
word genbaku {atom bomb) and indeed 'consisted solely of
pretty-sounding, poetical phrases'. The official speeches
which followed were as long as they were boring.
Then suddenly a white-haired American woman was
standing on the platform, stammering in broken Japanese
remarks that had never before been publicly uttered in
Hiroshima: for she announced to the survivors of the Pikadon
that in her opinion the dropping of the atomic bomb had
been a crime. As an American woman she must therefore
beg their forgiveness for this evil deed.
This woman - she was called Mary Macmillan, and since
the end of 1947 she had done a very great deal to help the
poorest people of Hiroshima - was a Methodist missionary.
Ichiro Kawamoto soon learned to know her personally. She
restored his faith to him, by showing him that there were
Christians who were not merely 'as clever as snakes', but
who had the courage publicly to criticize the misuse of
power.
A few weeks later another American arrived in Hiroshima, a
man whose words and deeds were to make an unforgettable
impression on the inhabitants of that city. He was a Quaker
named Floyd Schmoe, Professor of Botany at the University
of the State of Washington in Seattle, and he had had to wait
two years before at last receiving permission to come to
Hiroshima. The purpose of his visit was to build homes for a
few of those whose houses had been destroyed by the atom
bomb. It was highly unusual that a white man should wish to
show his involvement in Hiroshima's fate not by means of a
gift of money or of goods, but by the work of his own hands.
He was large and powerful, despite his snow-white hair. The
news of Hiroshima's destruction had had a deep and lasting
effect, largely because during the war he had run an internment camp for American citizens of Japanese descent and
had struck up many close friendships with the inmates.
At exactly the same time that tens of thousands of houses
were being smashed or burned in Hiroshima, Floyd Schmoe
was just completing the building of his own house on the
outskirts of Seattle. Now he felt ashamed that he should be
living in such comfort while the survivors of the atom bomb
had only caves or holes in the ground into which to creep.
So when he sent his friends Christmas cards he enclosed a
Dote in which he suggested that a few private individuals
should get together and collect money for the building of
houses in Hiroshima.
But when the Professor approached the responsible authorities, he was rebuffed with the remark: 'If you insist on doing
something for the Japanese, you had better work for LARA.'
The 'Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia' were a charitable
'trust* founded during the summer of 1946, when there was
famine in Japan. They had unified all the multifarious
agencies attempting to help that wretched country, and
collected, and shipped across the Pacific, notable quantities
of clothes, food, drugs and other essentials. MacArthur's
headquarters had not explicitly forbidden individual acts of
philanthropy, but certainly they were not encouraged.
Schmoe told himself that he would be able to carry out his
plan if only he could get to Tokyo, for he did not believe he
would have any trouble convincing the American authorities
on the spot. But it turned out to be almost impossible to get
there at that time, for without a military movement order or a
government appointment there were for all intents and
purposes no berths to be had on ships bound for Japan. So
Schmoe got himself taken on as shepherd and milkman with a
herd of goats that were being shipped across as a gift for a
Protestant charitable organization. After the energy that he
had expended looking after a dozen seasick nanny-goats
during the week's journey, the difficulties in getting to see
the 'new Japanese Mikado', Generalissimo MacArthur, and
in persuading him to grant permission for his plan, were
child's play by comparison.
In any event, the Professor had reached his destination at
last. He was accompanied by Andy, a young preacher from
Seattle, Ruth, a teacher from Tucson, and Pinkie, a cheerful
coloured girl from South Carolina. They arrived in Hiroshima at the beginning of August 1949. A delegation led by
Governor Kusunose and Mayor Hamai that went to Hiroshima station to meet them almost missed the new arrivals:
for Schmoe and his co-workers were certainly the first
foreigners since the war to travel from Tokyo to Hiroshima
third class.
Having finally arrived, it was not long before Professor
Schmoe learned that the most deeply-loved formula of
the bureaucrats - 'That's impossible!' - enjoys world-wide
currency and was as popular in Hiroshima as anywhere else.
In a city where there were still thousands of homeless it
should have been extremely easy to build a few houses for
the purpose of giving them away. The responsible orBcials of
the Welfare Department, however, had only one worry on
their minds. 'The moment you give one of your houses to
one family, you will automatically and immediately make at
least four thousand other families jealous. The lucky family
will be treated with distrust, even with hatred, by their
neighbours. And another thing: the people really in great
need will not be able to afford to live in the beautiful houses
you're planning to build. They couldn't even afford the
maintenance and the taxes.'
But the anxious fathers of Hiroshima were prepared to
help the helpers from America. They had immediately
submitted an alternative programme to them: instead of
building houses, Schmoe and his friends should construct a
Youth Library. This would then be designated as a 'Monument to American Generosity' and would be given a place of
honour in the proposed new city centre of the City of Peace.
The Professor did not hide his disappointment. He admitted
that such a collection of books would undoubtedly be of
value to the younger generation. Perhaps it might even lead
to a decline in the figures for juvenile delinquency. Would it
be a milestone along the road to better understanding
between the nations? That might well be true. But were
there not at the moment tasks of more immediate importance
waiting to be done?
'And what sort of books do you actually plan to put in the
library?' Schmoe finally asked.
'That's settled. We've received 4,000 volumes as a gift,'
was the reply.
Schmoe asked to see the books. And it transpired that
these consisted entirely of duplicates from an American Army
Library, and therefore, of course, were all in English. 'As far
as we were concerned, the Children's Library was "out"
from that point on,' Schmoe has said. 'So we came back to
our problem of "houses to live in". We discovered that the
city was building about 100 units for bombed-out families on
city property. These would be owned and maintained by the
city and rented to selected families at 700 yen per month
(about $1.85). This was the solution. We would build four
units in this programme and give them to the city to be
managed as were the other houses. As usual, there was no
"problem".1
During.the following weeks and months the inhabitants of
Hiroshima were treated to a curious spectacle. Professor
Floyd Schmoe, one of the most distinguished citizens of that
nation whose 'new weapon' had in a matter of seconds
flattened their city, was to be seen, day after day, working
inexhaustibly to rebuild what had been destroyed and personally
to make good a tiny fraction of the disaster.
But what a contrast between the forces of destruction and
those of construction! On the one hand the billion-dollar
budget of the Manhattan Project, on the other hand a tiny
fund, laboriously collected, a dollar here, two dollars there.
Then the wartime teamwork of the most brilliant scientists
and the most skilled engineers: now a handful of amateurs,
men of goodwill, attempting to be house-builders. In order
to bring 'Little Boy' - as the creators of the Hiroshima bomb
significantly called their project - into the world, the most
delicate and complicated machinery ever conceived by man
was put in action: all that Floyd Schmoe and his co-workers
had in the way of technical equipment was a single, small
handcart. On it he transported the planks from which the
houses would be built, single-handed, from the saw mills to
the building site in the Minamimachi district. But when the
Seizonisha (the survivors) met this man in his fifties, engaged,
day after day, on his task of carting wood, even as though he
were one of them, they would bow low to him with genuine
respect.
The houses were built in the Japanese style, each surrounded by its own little rock-garden. The Professor put
them up with the help of a single local carpenter, his three
American assistants and a dozen Japanese volunteers. On 1
October 1949 a short ceremony took place to mark the
handing over of the first four houses thus completed to the
representatives of the city of Hiroshima. The scholarly
builder gave a brief address, in which he said: 'What we felt
four years ago, when first we learned of Hiroshima's tragedy,
can only be expressed inadequately in mere words. That is
why we came to you, as soon as ever we could, to build
houses for the homeless.'
In the annual statistics concerning the reconstruction of
the great city of Hiroshima for the year 1949, these four new
houses make scarcely any impression. But in the hearts of
the atomic victims that solitary man - Dok Shumo, as they
call him - has even today a place of honour.
THE DEMOLITION MEN
1
After his fight with the Australian NCO, Kazuo M. was for a
long time without work. His reputation as a fighter had
spread quickly and no employer was willing to give a job to a
trouble-maker such as he.
Fortunately, his father, Setsuo M., had at last managed to
reopen his little gramophone business. Apart from repairing
machines, he now also bought and sold second-hand records,
and his business was a flourishing one. All Japan was 'record
crazy' at this time, and in the fourth year after the catastrophe
this had assumed epidemic proportions in Hiroshima.
From early morning till late at night the entire city
reverberated to the rhythm of hit tunes. Men hammered and
shook in time. The barracks, the new green and white
excursion buses, even the newest rebuilt square of the touristcrammed 'City of Peace' re-echoed to the love moans of
foreign singers and the muted saxophone of the 'Shopping
Boogie*. Music was a hiropon now, at last available to all, and
in as mixed and strange a dose as possible: a French popular
song would follow a Schubert quintet, to be succeeded in its
turn by a local Japanese hit that was followed by excerpts
from the Gotterdammerung.
Kazuo hated this perpetual musical din, yet had himself
become as much an addict as had all the others. Immediately
after the catastrophe he had believed that only silence should
be permitted to succeed the horror, a silence in which a new
world, shattered and trembling, would come to birth. Instead
of which the trombones whined, the guitars twanged, harps
dispensed a mendacious gaiety, while the percussion tinkled
and boomed. Anything rather than thought! Nothing should
be taken seriously any more! The apocalypse was being
smothered in syrup.
Kazuo's reputation as a wild man had attracted the attention
of Mr Maruguma, the head of a small firm that for
generations had engaged in the business of dismantling
and transporting houses. The employees of this firm were
traditionally young, strong, tough, and the boss usually
recruited them among those recently discharged from corrective
institutions or from prison. Since the end of the war he had
experienced increasing difficulty in finding the sort of men
he wanted, for the gangsters and black market offered more
attractive ways of earning a living to those young
hooligans than did the dangerous work of house demolition.
Maruguma arranged that Kazuo be brought to his office,
so that he might have a closer look at him. But when the
applicant for a job entered the room, he found himself
confronted not by the head of the demolition business, a
man known to all in Hiroshima, but by a girl aged, apparently,
about fourteen. She spoke to him at once, and with an ease
of manner that was most unusual in a Japanese girl of that
age. From the first moment of their conversation Kazuo felt a
trust in this child in her schoolgirl's uniform such as no
human being had inspired in him for a very long time.
Yukiko reminded him of Sumiko, the girl who had died in
his arms the day after the Pikadon, and he told her about all
those anxieties that had been oppressing him for so long.
'Every word I uttered then,' he later said, 'was an
expression of my anger and my grief. But she listened
attentively, occasionally nodding in agreement, at times even
smiling, as I spewed out my disgust at everything and
everybody in our postwar world.'
Finally, almost two hours later, the boss appeared. He
gave an obviously doubtful glance at Kazuo's thin arms, but
nevertheless with a certain hesitancy inquired whether he
wished to join the Maruguma-gumi. So at last Kazuo had a
job again. Yet as he made his way home he realized that the
most important event of the day had not been finding work,
but meeting the girl Yukiko. He was to discover on the
following day that she was the second eldest daughter of his
new employer.
Up to now Kazuo had only been accustomed to relatively
light manual work. Now he had to use his whole strength.
But the boss and his shigotu-shi (assistants) displayed great
patience with the 'new boy’. They showed him how to drive
the sharp end of the tobi into the wood, how to loosen an
entire wall by a skilful tugging of the hook, and precisely
when to jump aside in order to avoid being crushed by the
fall. They warned him of the dangers that lurked beneath
ruined houses, demolished by the bomb and now covered
with undergrowth which must first be carefully cleared away,
tough and heavy work.
After a few months Kazuo was indistinguishable from the
other employees of the gumi. He had grown strong and agile
and had developed a sixth sense for the danger of falling
rubble. He could knock down house posts, lug heavy loads,
and no longer felt sick when he stumbled over a desiccated
corpse.
The passing of the law whereby Hiroshima was honoured
with the tide of'City of Peace' inaugurated a period of boom
for the demolition men. To begin it there had first to be
fought a paper war between the city administration of Hiroshima and the Central Construction Office in Tokyo, as to
how the special grant was to be spent; it was not at all clear
what the community would finally be allowed to build with
the millions at its disposal. Meanwhile, a beginning was
made by clearing the city centre and the railway station
district of those Barakku and booths that had sprung out of
the ground like mushrooms in the period immediately after
the Pikadon.
Before the demolition men could get to work it was often
necessary to call in the police to remove families of squatters.
Some had submitted petitions requesting a temporary stay of
the expulsion order. When these were refused they often
offered physical resistance, and sometimes even attempted to
murder the policeman who had come to evict them. To these
desperate people even a prison sentence seemed preferable to
the fear of being homeless once again.
Kazuo saw much unhappiness and much that disgusted
him in those months. He did his best to conceal how deeply
he was affected by it all, when he saw the pain, the anger, the
impotence and the defencelessness of the people being
evicted from their temporary homes. As the ruins of a house
demolished by himself and his comrades came roaring down
about their ears, not all the music from all the gramophones
could blot out, in his head, the sounds of voices from 'the
past'. Memories of 'that day' quite simply refused to be
silenced.
All the same these were the happiest months that Kazuo had
known since 1945. Like most of the other demolition workers
he had joined the Voluntary Fire Service, the I-gumi. He
says about this: 'The men who joined it were, in fact, goodfor-nothings to a man. They looked on their work with the
Fire Service as a sort of voluntary expiation of their sins, as a
gesture of compensation for their evil deeds. As the word
"Voluntary" implies, nobody compelled us to do this work,
and we received not a single yen by way of payment or
subsistence. The members of the Sendee even had to pay for
the fire-fighting equipment out of their own pockets, and
when the alarm went we had to transport it ourselves to the
scene of the fire. If one of us were hurt, or killed, there was
no question of compensation.
'As soon as the bell rang we clambered into our protective
clothing and hurried, as fast as ever we could, to the scene of
the fire. We always fought it in imminent peril of death. But I
thought to myself: "Even if I should die this way - I don't
regret it."'
Kazuo could at last give vent to the aggressive side of his
nature as a fireman, without running the danger of falling
foul of his employer or of coming into conflict with the
forces of the law. Indeed, this aspect of his character now
won him admiration and respect. Membership of the Fire
Service meant far more to him than to any of his comrades.
He wrote about this:
'Our gumi has the designation of Gi-ja, which does not
mean only "voluntary" but also has the meaning of "just"
and "courageous". Our "City of Death" has been resurrected, and now - well, now it has an appearance such as
none could have foreseen. I can certainly understand that the
young men and girls should wish above all to dance and sing
and enjoy themselves. But I myself feel a strong antipathy to
all that, and deliberately cut myself off from that life, which
indeed often fills me with emotions of disgust. I am giving
expression to that disgust when I obey the orders inherent in
the word Gi-yu, and hurl myself against the Demon of Fire.
At least I can drive him out of the city!'
Immediately beneath this entry in his diary there is written,
in a very small hand:
'This work is fun. Every day is a delight. And not just for
that reason. I've got a girl-friend. She knows what she likes.
Clever and full of fun. My comrades envy me. But they say:
"You'll make a fine couple one day, you two.'"
The girl about whom Kazuo wrote so enthusiastically was
Yukiko, whom he had met on the very first day he joined the
gumi.
A few months later an entry in his diary reads:
'Discovered that Y. has dimples. Told her so. She: "How
rude! Did you only notice that today? I know where your
birthmark is. On the lobe of your ear." And then her dimples
showed all right ...'
That all this must lead to something more seemed unavoidable, nor did they try to hide their emotions from anyone.
But both families registered instant disapproval. Kazuo's
mother maintained that they were both too young to marry,
and Yukiko's elder sister based her disapproval of Kazuo
upon the fact that he was their father's employee. In view of
this, a marriage between the two would be inadmissible
according to Japanese custom.
Almost exactly one year after Kazuo and Yukiko had first
met, he wrote in his diary:
'The resistance from both sides is driving us wild. We
won't be parted. On the contrary, we're not waiting. For no
one can separate us any more.'
On 15 January 1950 a ceremony took place in Hiroshima
which many citizens of that town greeted with more enthusiasm and delight than they felt on 6 August 1949, when their
city was officially proclaimed a 'City of Peace'. This ceremony
was the opening of the new baseball stadium and the
simultaneous re-creation of what before the war had been a
famous local baseball team, The Carps, so named after the
Carp Castle which had been destroyed by the atom bomb.
Next to Sumo wrestling the American game had, even
before the war, been the most popular sport in Japan. And
Hiroshima had had the reputation of being Japan's 'Baseball
Capital'. As Mayor Hamai states in his memoirs, he had two
good reasons for wishing to revive a sport that was so popular
with the masses: the first was his desire to give the citizens
'something that they could enjoy and get excited about
together': the other was his calculation that the city would
profit from the gate receipts to the tune of several million
yen per year. The second consideration proved mistaken, for
just as the preparations were being completed for the recreation of the Carp team, a tax reform was introduced in
Japan according to which the profits of all sporting events
would no longer accrue to the cities, but would be paid into
the coffers of the provincial administrations. But Hamai's
hope that the Carps would encourage a community spirit
among the citizens was to be fulfilled. In the local patriotism of
sport the old and the new citizens of Hiroshima at last
found something about which they could all be equally
enthusiastic. It is true that the Carps lost almost all thengames and were almost always to be found very near the
bottom of the 'Central League'. It made no difference; the
members of the team were henceforth the idols of the greater
part of the population. Kazuo knew one of the sporting
heroes, a man named Kakuda, well, for they had been at fschool together. He therefore frequently asked him out, even
though the baseball star had only one unvarying topic of
conversation, baseball.
Yukiko, who had played in her school soft-ball team,
followed Kakuda's tales of epic heroism on the diamond with
far greater attention than did Kazuo, who, if the truth be
told, was frequently bored by them. She did not say much,
even when the ball player was describing and analysing a
recent game for the fourth or fifth time, but her eyes shone: it
seemed to Kazuo then that they shone exactly as they had
done on that occasion long ago when first he had told her
about himself and his life.
Actually Kazuo's jealousy should have been aroused at
once. But he showed patience; indeed he even continued to
invite the sporting hero to go out with them, because for
some time he had suspected that his girl-friend was beginning to
find his own company somewhat boring. She was a typical
example of the tough of postwar Japan, and loved hot music,
wild dancing and spectator sports for the masses. She read
sexy novels for preference, and pseudo-scientific magazines
such as Liberal, Aka to Kuro (Red and Black), or FujuSeikatsu (Married Life) in which 'sexual liberation' was
discussed and extolled. Kazuo, on the other hand, felt
increasingly remote from the 'modern youth', which was
interested in nothing save the pursuit of pleasure and immediate
satisfaction. He attempted in vain to excite Yukiko's
interest in the ideals of old Japan.
Then one day a girl of his acquaintance whispered:
'Kazuo-san, haven't you noticed what's going on between
Yukiko and Kakuda?' He dismissed this angrily, as the
spiteful gossip of a woman scorned, for this girl had indicated
more than once she would be pleased if Kazuo were to make a
pass at her. But soon he was to hear similar remarks from
other quarters, so he decided at last that he must have it out
with his sweetheart.
'At first she said nothing,' Kazuo remembers. €She hid her
face in her hands. Then all of a sudden she burst into tears
and admitted everything. She made no attempt to excuse
herself. So I boxed her ears. I must have hit her two or three
times. Then I thought: "What's the point in punishing a girl
like this?" I saw that I had been blind and stupid, and I felt
deeply ashamed of myself ... Now, at long last, it was all
quite clear to me: I had lost, all along the line I had lost. The
customs of the new generation had acquired greater strength
than my principles. This was an unbearable discovery, and
from it there grew at last a plan. I would commit suicide. I
went to Yasuji's and Sumiko's grave, and there I swallowed a
large quantity of poison. A strange thought occurred to me:
Yasuji and Sumiko, who had died on "that day", had really
been luckier than I. It was only because I had survived that I
was compelled to go on living in a world that was rotten
through and through.'
He was first conscious that the poison was beginning to
work when he felt a burning pain in his stomach. But his
mind remained perfectly clear. 'What will the people say?' he
wondered. 'That I killed myself for unrequited love? No, not
that. I refuse to die on account of a slut like her! They'll all
sigh and murmur: "Yes, yes, crossed in love!" But what I
have done was done for quite different reasons.
'Because I just didn't want to have anything more to do
with it all. I was frightened lest bit by bit I grow soiled and
dirty myself. I have tried to live a clean and upright life. And
now all my self-confidence is gone ...!'
Suddenly the young man made a desperate decision. He
must still perform some action which would prove to all the
world, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he had not wished to
die for silly reasons of jealousy. Yukiko's unfaithfulness was
not as important as all that. But the way she had failed him
had reopened the 'cheloid in his heart'. And tormented by
his memories of 'that day' he asked himself: 'Why are people
today incapable of replying to die greatness of past pain
with the greatness of a better life?' It was because of this
disappointment that he was about to vanish from the earth,
and he was determined to tell them all, before he did so.
Therefore with his last remaining strength Kazuo dragged
himself home.
And then:
'My chest hurt, as if someone were crushing it with brute
force. My head ached, as if it had been split open. There
was noise, people far away ... They were coming closer ...
and right beside my ear a voice was crying "Kazuo!" I awoke
and was fully conscious. The brightness before my eyes was
blinding. As if I had buried my head in the sun. "Kazuo-san,
you're saved!" My body lay on the operating table in the
hospital. The faces of my father and mother, our neighbours,
they were all crowded about me, one next to the other ...
"It's all right now, he's saved," a doctor was saying. He was
about forty years of age and spoke with self-satisfaction, as if
he alone were responsible for having dragged me back from
the jaws of death. Those words infuriated me.
(
I shouted at the top of my voice, so loudly that even I was
surprised by the noise: "Who says I wanted to be saved?
Enough, finish me off, once and for all. Kill me, why don't
you kill me?"'
THE MURDER
1
The shiny little steel ball fell through a forest of steel pins,
deflected now to the left now to the right, winding its
way downwards. The player attempted to foresee what was
scarcely foreseeable. Should the ball fall where he hoped, a
bell rang, and a torrent of these small balls was disgorged at
him. These he could either exchange for cheap prizes or he
could play them again.
The player almost always lost. The owner of the pin-ball
saloon could so arrange his machines that the chances of
winning were very slender indeed. But each player persuaded
himself that he was perhaps quick and skilful enough to beat
the machine. And when he had just about decided he was
not, and was on the point of giving up, the bell of a nearby
machine would ring out, a win! If the fellow along the line
could pull it off, why, so could he! Another go ... He would
pull the lever, a new steel ball would appear above the
horizon of the automaton's world ... and ... begin ... to
fall.
This game was called Paekinko, and enjoyed an unrivalled
popularity in postwar Japan. Thousands of Paekinko Parlours
were opened, some with only ten machines, others with
several hundred, and these remained open from early morning
till late at night. A few of these establishments tried to
increase their appeal by playing popular music or even by
treating their customers to free striptease shows. But this did
not really have the desired effect, for the players had no wish
to be distracted from their game.
In Hiroshima too the Paekinko Parlours achieved a rapid
popularity and were crammed at almost every hour of the
day. The most popular one of all was located in a street on
die outskirts of the business district called Hachobori Street:
its name was The Atomic Mushroom. Kazuo M. was one of
bomb ... It had half ruined me already, I told myself. It
might just as well ruin me altogether. It made more sense
that way.'
times the amount you're offering us. On a cash basis,
naturally.'
So this deal fell through because the price he could get for
the Niseis' dollar wasn't good enough. But Kazuo had made at
least one important discovery. For he now knew how
relatively large were the sums that changed hands when such
secret and illegal transactions took place.
Money, money, money ... it became Kazuo's battle-cry.
'Everything in the world is money, money, money.' Such was
the discovery that he believed he had made. 'Yukiko left me
... because of money. Toyoko sleeps with me because of
the money I bring in. I get it quite cold-bloodedly from
blackmail. They say a man who wants money shouldn't be
squeamish about how he gets it. That's a sentiment which
seems to be tailormade for me.'
But such small-scale business did not bring in much cash,
because it was only little people who would be frightened by
a solitary blackmailer such as he and who, under threats,
would part with a few yen. It was while looking for a larger
field in which to operate that Kazuo happened to stumble
upon a money-changing firm. What happened was that Se-o,
one of the electricians who was now out of work as a result
of Nakata's flight, came to Kazuo and said:
'Listen here, there's a group of Nisei (Americans of
Japanese origin) tourists in town. One of them wants to
change two hundred dollars on the black market.' 'How much
does he want for it?' '390 to 400 yen to the dollar.'
Kazuo set out to look for a man who would buy the
'black dollars'. He knew that in Hiroshima there were the
proprietors of certain general stores who were always on the
look-out for dollars: through relations or middlemen they
could use them to buy goods in the States or in the American
PX. Together with a 'specialist' in this line of business - the
much imprisoned Takemoto - Kazuo visited a number of
these merchants. 'Sorry, the black-market price at present is
between 375 and 380 yen per dollar,' they said, one after the
other. If you've got dollars to sell at that price, we'll take ten
It was an unusually hot snd heavy summer in Hiroshima,
where the population had grown to 280,000 in the course of
the last year. For the first time since 1946 the now overcrowded city suffered a water shortage. Day after day the
sun burned down out of a cloudless sky on to the dusty city,
which, save for an occasional green oasis here and there, was
still treeless. When the wind rose, the streets were filled with
the stench of decay. Some said that this came from the
bottom of the swamps, now dried up, others that the dry
river bed was the cause. But there were rumours that the
smell was the stink of corpses from 'that time'. Inhabitants of
the modern community centre of Motomachi, which had
been built close to the place where the mass graves had once
been dug, dared not open their windows at all for days on
end.
The social and internal political tensions which had first
become apparent with the Nippon Steel Works riots went
on. On fences and house walls placards were to be seen,
with the poem, Ikari no uta (The Day of Anger), that Toge
had written in honour of the steel strike. The Communists
were no longer content to repeat their warlike slogans. Early
in the year Moscow had accused them of adopting 'too
conciliatory an attitude'. So now they embarked upon a
campaign of 'direct action'. While some elements of the
Party hesitated to embrace this formidable policy, which
apparently did not even exclude political terrorism, in Hiroshima the radical 'international faction' (that is to say the
Moscow-controlled elements) guided the Party's destiny.
Since the introduction of the 'Dodge Plan' the whole
country had clearly been suffering from an economic
recession. Unemployment rose, many small firms were forced
out of business, while political scandals involving the bribery
of officials were undermining the nation's faith in democracy.
Hiroshima too had its public scandals. Senior officials in the
provincial administration were convicted of having pocketed
funds publicly collected for charity through the so-called
'Red Feather' organization, and of having spent this money
on themselves. For a time suspicion was even directed to
Kusunose, the Provincial Governor, not merely for his
failure to detect and prevent such peculation; some people
said that he had himself profited from it. The Society of
Hiroshima Hemp-thread Purveyors was accused of a swindle
involving millions of yen. According to a subsequent analysis
by the Chugoku Press in their issue of 12 December 1950,
criminal activity during this year reached record levels. Of
particular significance was the increase, sixty to eighty per
cent, in cases of arson, the typical crime of vengeance and
terrorization. The Family Court even felt obliged to publish a
special report dealing with divorce and crime among
members of the younger generation; the 'economic chaos'
was stated to be principally to blame for the current state of
affairs.
The news of the outbreak of the Korean War came as a
great shock, and nowhere more so than in Hiroshima. Toge,
the poet who had looked to a happier future, was so upset
when he heard it that he had a heart attack. The statistics for
suicide showed a sharp increase. While the inhabitants of
other Japanese cities rapidly prepared to exploit the expected
wartime boom to the full, the people of Hiroshima felt
otherwise. In the atom-bombed city the memory of war's
horror was too profoundly branded into their bones: to
begin with they simply relapsed into a mood of the deepest
hopelessness.
Ichiro Kawamoto recalls those summer days of the year
1950:
'From one moment to the next we had been thrown back
into the past. With our own eyes we could watch the
development of this new war by day and by night... Open
flatcars loaded with tanks, trucks and heavy artillery rolled
through the city. Whole trainloads of white and black troops
passed through on their way to their embarkation ports in
Western Japan. And as dusk fell there came once again the
roar of aeroplanes overhead. Quickly, as though driving the
sun away, they were gone. Everything seemed to create an
atmosphere hi which a Third World War might break out
any minute ...'
In October of 1949 the Soviets had announced that they
too possessed nuclear weapons, and this had been the signal
for a general acceleration of the atomic arms race. One result of
this had been the founding in Hiroshima of a Peace
Movement, consisting primarily of scientists, writers and
artists, and, to begin with, this had had no party political
basis. Now, with the outbreak of the war in the neighbouring
country of Korea, the Peace Movement became more active,
issuing manifestoes and printing leaflets. When the press
first indicated that atomic weapons might possibly be used in
Korea, the dry administration announced its intention of
collecting eye-witness accounts of the destruction of Hiroshima; these would be translated into English and distributed
throughout the world as a warning.
The gossips and scandalmongers worked overtime. It was
said that the 'Hundred Metre Street' had, from the beginning, been laid out as it was in order that it might serve as a
runway for jet fighters. It was also said that the promenade
which was being built along the quays, as a place where the
citizens of Hiroshima might take a pleasant evening stroll,
had in fact a far more sinister purpose: it was intended to
serve as an exit through which these citizens could flee in the
event of Hiroshima being atom-bombed once again. And as it
happened - though really for reasons quite other than
these - those two items of the general reconstruction project
were exceptionally far advanced. Had the city fathers received
advance information of the coming war? And was it really
pure coincidence that at this particular moment Mayor Hamai
should happen to be travelling abroad?
In this strained and overheated atmosphere, at a moment
when almost everyone was reckoning on the immediate and
inevitable outbreak of a new World War, and when a second
destruction of Hiroshima was seen in the writing on the wall,
Kazuo M. made his own private plans of campaign for the
war that he now proposed to wage against a society that he
had come to hate. 'I wish to become a really evil man, a
proper criminal. That will be my rebellion against "those
others".' Those were the actual words which he wrote at the
time, his own private mobilization order that he addressed to
himself.
An 'enemy* was easily found. In the Inari Machi district
there lived a certain black-market operator by the name of
Yamaji, who because of his greed and harshness had made
himself particularly unpopular. If a would-be customer
should find any of his goods too expensive, he would growl:
'Why should I worry if you don't earn enough money,
woman? If you think my prices too high, don't take the
goods.' If with heavy heart the customer should nevertheless
decide to buy from him, Yamaji would then amuse himself
by mocking her: 'No, no, I couldn't sleep at night if you were to
think I'd robbed you. Go and buy your condensed milk
somewhere else. Anyhow, you're not getting any from me,
that I promise you.T Because he knew for a fact that at that
time - thanks to a brother who worked for the Americans
and who received illegal supplies regularly - he was the only
person in Hiroshima who had canned milk to sell.
So Kazuo decided that Yamaji should be his victim, and
he could and did tell himself that this choice exonerated him
from acting purely for reasons of personal gain. For was not
Yamaji a foul person, a menace to his society, who should be
neutralized? Furthermore he did all sorts of dirty deals
with those foreign soldiers whom Kazuo loathed so deeply.
Another advantage was the fact that Takemoto, the same
person with whom Kazuo had tried and failed to do the deal
in black-market dollars, had been at school with Yamaji and
thus enjoyed the merchant's complete confidence.
Kazuo's plan was as follows. He would offer, through
Takemoto, to sell Yamaji two hundred dollars. When the
black-marketeer arrived, with the equivalent in Japanese
currency, Kazuo simply planned to hit him on the head from
the back and run off with the money. Since he would never
before have had any dealings with the man he proposed to
rob, suspicion must inevitably fall on Takemoto, who had
already been sent to prison three times for theft. ('A second
menace to society neutralized,' Kazuo remarked to himself,
with inner triumph.) Kazuo would then be in a position
calmly to set about planning his next campaign.
These calculations, however, were almost immediately
proved wrong. Yamaji sent a message by the middleman
Takemoto to say that he was not interested in 'small deals'. At
the moment he needed at least $500, for which he was
prepared to pay between 180,000 and 200,000 yen, depending
on the black-market rate prevailing on the day.
Two hundred thousand yen ... Kazuo was like a drunken
man when Takemoto gave him the figure. At a single stroke he
would become the possessor of a small fortune. But at once
another thought crossed his mind. Since this was a sum so
much larger than he had anticipated, he could no longer
reckon on Yamaji coming to the rendezvous unaccompanied. He
would certainly bring one or more 'bodyguards* with him.
'How,' Kazuo wondered, 'can I bump off several men at the
same time?'
The nineteen-year-old pondered for days on end how he
could lure both Yamaji and his bodyguards into a trap. Then he
read in the newspapers a report of the sensational trial
known as the 'Teikoku Bank case*, which had been going on for
months in a Tokyo court and which was now approaching its
end. One day in January 1948, shortly before the bank
closed for the night, a painter named Hirasawa had appeared,
disguised as an official of the Health Department, and had
told the branch manager that he and his staff of fifteen must
immediately drink some medicine which would act as a
prophylactic against the various epidemics then raging. He
had brought the medicine with him. The treatment was,
needless to say, at government expense. Since there were
indeed epidemics rife at this time, sixteen persons immediately obeyed this order, which seemed quite reasonable, and
swallowed the bitter draught. They had collapsed almost at
once, whereupon the bank robber had calmly and quietly set
about his real business.
As in diis cause celebre, so now Kazuo decided that potassium
cyanide would be the logical solution. This poison was
comparatively easy to come by. For Funabashi, a close friend of
the M. family, had mentioned that in his work, which was the
gilding of picture-frames and lacquer bowls, he used
potassium cyanide. Indeed, one day when they were discussing
the much publicized trial, he had said, by way of a joke, mat
he possessed enough potassium cyanide to dispose of every
bank employee in the Province of Hiroshima.
When Kazuo entered his acquaintance's place of work he
found him engaged in conversation with two customers.
They were being told, in great detail, exactly how to use a
ventilator which they had come to collect; Mr Funabashi
repaired such objects, as a sideline. Kazuo had wished to
appear entirely calm, but the delay had made him nervous.
As a result, when he said to the family friend that he wanted
'some of that stuff for gilding things', his voice was so
tremulous and excited that the craftsman hesitated for a
moment. Then he warned Kazuo: 'If you were to swallow
that much of it ...' and he showed on his middle finger
exactly how much he meant, '... it's "curtains" in sixty
seconds.' Perhaps he had heard about Kazuo's attempted
suicide and was afraid lest the boy be planning to try this
again.
Now it was only a question of fixing on a meeting place.
Such a big deal could obviously not take place in the street,
nor would any sort of public house be suitable. Kazuo tried in
vain to find a suitable room. Since there was none to be had
Kazuo made an almost incredible decision: he asked
Takemoto to bring Yamaji to his own home. 'Not Nakata's
place. Bring him to Danbara-cho, my parents' house.' And
on the same day Kazuo packed up and left his mistress's
house, to return to his parents. It is to be assumed - though
he has refused to comment on this - that Kazuo wished to
keep Mrs Nakata out of the business altogether, while he
derived a certain grim satisfaction from turning his intensely
respectable and strict father's house into 'the scene of the
crime*.
'First birthday of the City of Peace'. 'Wire thieves electrocuted cutting live cable'. 'Printing ofAkakata (Red Flag) and
229 other publications forbidden*. 'Water supply exhausted'.
'Hiroshima Tramway Company to dismiss 131. Lively protests
expected’. 'Mayor Hamai presents an Atomic Cross at Caux
Moral Rearmament Meeting^ 'Golden Temple in Kyoto burns.
Arson?' 'New Zoo opens'. 'Six years penal servitude for
spreader of anti-American leaflets'. 'Truman requests two
billion dollars for new A-bomb project'. 'Kenichi Yama-moto
(19) stabs Hisao Dan (42) with carving knife*.
Kazuo read one old issue of the Chugoka Shimbun after
another, but the time till the meeting just would not pass.
Then it was precisely eleven o'clock, and they should have
arrived long ago. He began to read the serial, a novel called
The Poisoned Grass of the City, instalment No. 147. The
author, Taijiro Tamura, had made his reputation with a book
entitled Gate of Flesh, and had simultaneously inaugurated
the exciting 'Flesh Literature' school which was doing so
well in postwar Japan.
Eleven-fifteen ... Now only the advertisements were left. At
the Kokusai Cinema they were playing Story of a Decline. The
advertisement was intended to make the reader's mouth water:
'The heroine of this film, based on the famous novel by
Tatsuzo Ishikawa, commits one crime after another for love,
until she goes to bits. An anthology of tears ...' In the Futabe
Theatre, I am Going to be Killed, with Barbara Stanwyck.
They arrived at last, half an hour late. Kazuo has described
what happened in the following words:
'As Pd imagined, Yamaji had brought two toughs with
him, as his bodyguards. In addition to these three, Takemoto
was there as well. I asked them to sit down and said: "Morita an invented name, he was the person who was supposed to be
producing the dollars - hasn't come yet. Please be patient for
a little while." That was how I calmed them down,
blaming it all on my imaginary person.
'Then I made sure that they'd got the whole sum with
them, in cash. Yamaji showed me the wad of banknotes, two
hundred thousand yen, in thousands. He'd wrapped them up
in an old piece of newspaper.
'The hands on my watch showed twelve o'clock. "Mr
Morita is very unpunctual." It was Yamaji who said this.
There was probably no double-meaning to his words but I
interpreted them as meaning: "There's something fishy about
this whole business."
'I also began to suspect that his bodyguards were looking
at me with mistrust. Those two had hardly said a word since
they arrived, but kept staring at me in a most peculiar way,
their heads down. "Must get this over and done with," I said
to myself. And it seemed to me as though my watch were
ticking away the seconds faster and faster.
(
"Morita-san must certainly be turning up at any moment
now," I said. "But while we're waiting I'll fetch us all a
drink." I was glad to leave the room for a moment: the
atmosphere in there was really becoming intolerable. Two or
three doors down the street I found a little Ice-cream Parlour. I
bought four bottles of lemonade, the sort called Calpis.
Without anyone noticing, I slipped the cyanide I had ready
into the lemonade.
'The moment I'd poured out the drinks all four of them
took an enormous swallow of Calpis. Immediately one of the
bodyguards began to heave, and ran out of the room,
swearing. Then the others ran out into the streets, too, and I
noticed how some of the liquid, which had been spilt, was
bleaching a bright yellow patch upon the straw mat.
* "Listen, you. What's that drink you gave us?" I felt a
tremendous grip. It was the tough who'd run out first. He
was holding my shoulder in a grip of steel.
' "What do you mean? It was Calpis, of course. What's the
matter?" I pretended to be completely surprised. But I
realized as soon as I spoke that my voice was trembling.
'"The stuff had a horribly bitter taste," he grumbled.
"Must have gone off. Come on, let's complain to the shop."
'He picked up a bottle, with something still in it, and
together we made our way to the Ice-cream Parlour.
'"Hey, you," I said to the man behind the counter. "That
Calpis we just bought from you, it had a funny, bitter sort of
taste."
'"Impossible. Only first-class goods sold here."
'"But it's bitter as hell. Really. Ask this man here."
'While this argument was going on, we suddenly heard a
woman's voice screeching: "There ... over there ... a dead
man!"
'We ran out. About ten yards away, in the middle of the
street, a man had collapsed. It was Yamaji.
'We picked him up by his head and his feet and carried
him back into the house. As we stepped over the doorway
something fell out of his trouser pocket and landed at my
feet. It was the bundle of banknotes, two hundred thousand
yen. Almost automatically I picked it up and tucked it in my
pocket. So now I'd got the 200,000 I'd wanted so much.
'But I didn't feel at all happy about it. Indeed I was
horribly upset. "Murderer!" a voice kept shouting inside me:
"Murderer!" I began to tremble, everything was swimming
before my eyes, and yet when this got better I once again
heard: "Murderer!" I tried to silence this inner voice by
pressing my hands to my ears and closing my eyes tight. It
was no good.
'"Send for the doctor!" I had suddenly sprung to my feet
and was shouting for a doctor. No, not for myself. I wanted to
save Yamaji's life. I was, quite simply, scared that I'd be
branded as a murderer for all eternity.
'Some man, overcome with curiosity, was standing as if
entranced beside Yamaji's stretched-out body, staring at him
and not knowing what to do. This was the man I yelled at to
get a doctor, and he ran off at once. Yamaji's face had
turned bright red. He looked extremely ill, but he was
breathing regularly. Perhaps he might still be saved. I got
him some water, and even poured it into his mouth myself. He
managed to swallow half a glass, but the second half he
vomited up again. His bare chest had now also turned deep
red. I laid a damp cloth over it, and prayed that he might yet
live. The cloth very quickly became hot; when I went to
change it I saw that his chest was now turning purple. Did
this mean the end?
*I shook Yamaji's body with all my strength. At last the
doctor came. He tried artificial respiration. Sat like a horseman astride the poisoned man. And inside my head voice
repeated, rhythmically: "Murderer ... murderer ...
murderer.*"
AUGUST THE SIXTH
1
It was generally known as the 'Calpis Murder', after the
brand name of the popular lemonade into which Kazuo had
poured the potassium cyanide, and the story excited much
interest among Hiroshima's sensation-hungry newspaper
readers. Here was a boy of nineteen who at his first examination admitted with brutal frankness that he had been prepared to murder four men, if necessary, simply in order to
acquire 200,000 yen! Every reader could feel that, no matter
how devious his own paths might be, he was a man of
outstanding virtue in comparison with such a monster as this.
The black-marketeer Yamaji, who died twenty minutes
after taking the poison, was not the only victim of the
story. The ice-cream salesman, Teraji, was only accidentally
involved. Yet when Kazuo had complained of the bitter taste of
the lemonade he had sold him, in his determination to show
that he did not believe this he swallowed what was left in the
half-empty bottle in a single draught. For days he hovered
between life and death.
On the other hand the remaining three victims of the
attempted poisoning only needed immediate first-aid treatment at the Yoshizaki Hospital, from which they were
released that same day.
When the accused, Kazuo M., was arrested close to the
scene of the crime, he gave the impression of having been
also badly poisoned. He was lurching along, head down,
occasionally reeling like a drunkard, without any apparent
destination. The policeman who picked him up was called
Okamoto, and had known Kazuo since childhood. The
reason he brought him in was that he thought Kazuo most be
suffering from food poisoning, and he therefore took him to
the Health Department clinic.
The doctor on duty used the stomach pump on the boy
and reported, significantly enough, that he had found traces
of poison. In the days that followed, when the case was being
given nationwide press coverage, this story was confirmed.
The popular theory was that in order to encourage the others to
drink, Kazuo had himself sipped the cyanide lemonade.
In his own version of it all, Kazuo maintains that he 'had
not swallowed a single drop of the drink'. How did the
doctor come to make such a statement? Apparently he wished to
get into the limelight. Or so it seemed to Kazuo, as he lay on
the doctor's table after having been given no less than
twenty anti-toxin injections; and this seemed to the young
man yet further proof that even those medical men who were
honoured by society as incorruptible and devoted men were
not honourable.
In fact it was another sort of poison that had entered into
Kazuo, a poison undetectable hi any test tube, but one that is
always fatal and for which no antidote exists, the poison of
memory. It had entered into him at the moment that he gave
the black-marketeer a glass of water, fearing that this was too
late. Years ago, after the Pikadon, he had knelt like this
beside his dying friend, Sumiko, and had moistened her lips,
had tried to wipe away the screams that had come from those
lips during their walk through hell together.
Such a similarity in the faces of the two dying people ...!
Yamaji, whom he hated, and Sumiko, with whom he had felt so
intimately linked. 'In truth isn't Yamaji also a victim of that
same bomb?' Kazuo asked himself. During the hot days and
nights that he spent in a cell reeking of ammonia, sour oil
and the lavatory in the corner, while he waited to be
examined, the present and the past became strangely
confounded.
Since the day it happened Kazuo had never dared to try
and remember the exact details of that walk through the
burning city. But now the time of reckoning had come; now
he must judge himself; and so even what had been most
unbearable now came flooding back. Perhaps it would enable
him to understand or, better still, to shed his burden.
He wrote hi his diary:
'Why didn't I run away while I could? I've committed a
murder. Even now I find this hard to believe. You can't
believe it? He's dead. What's so remarkable about that? On the
day of the atom bomb you saw so many dead people, side by
side, on top of one another. And you heard the sound of
bones cracking as you climbed over them, and you weren't
even particularly shaken. Extraordinary, all my feelings must
have been dislocated at that time. If I'd shouted at myself
then: "You've killed a man!", my answer would have been:
"Really! That makes one more." For the rest - did I really
need money so badly that I was prepared to kill for it? That
can't be true ... But what was it that sent my life off the
rails? It was that day, that sixth of August ... And I'm not
the only person for whom it must bear the guilt. Not just the
flesh and bones, but the hearts and the souls of countless
human beings were ruined by that day. Since then the whole
structure of society has tottered. Small wonder that the weak
should starve while the strong have become robbers. This
Yamaji, a foul creature! He did his dirty deals almost publicly,
and got away with it, because he was well in with the police. 'It
all boils down to this: in our dark city I tried, all alone, to
follow the path of honour. As the old saving has it: "An
honest man on his own is always in danger ...** And now
they all act as if they were astonished, their eyes almost pop out
of their head, because a single black-market operator has been
rubbed out! And me? I did a good job. Nevertheless -my tears
flow. I cannot hold them back. Is it because I do not understand,
or are my tears shed in pity for myself?*
At his first examination the officials treated Kazuo with their
customary brutality. One hit him in the face. Another kicked
him hi the stomach. 'Spit it out!' they shouted. 'Confess, or
you*ll get more of the same. Don't imagine we're going to
treat you soft, just because you're a kid. Anyhow we know all
the facts already. Don't pretend to be ignorant.*
Then he was taken before a senior police official, whose
tone was very different. This was the head of the Prefecture
Police, a mild, elephantine man, who treated the prisoner with
gentleness, even with a sort of sympathetic understanding. He
scarcely referred to the crime. Instead he spent two hours
encouraging Kazuo to talk about his past.
The reason for this unusually sympathetic attitude on the
part of the senior official was that he had received a visitor
on the previous day. A man named Setsuo M. had arrived at
his office, claiming to be the father of the 'Calpis murderer'
and urgently requesting an interview. 'The usual plea for
clemency,' the police chief had thought and had prepared his
customary reply, consoling but non-committal.
But the skinny little man seated on the far side of the desk
had had quite another request to make, a plea such as had
never before been made to the police official in his thirty
years of service. For he requested that his errant son, who had
caused so much suffering and brought so much dishonour on
his family, should be condemned to death without fail. Only
thus could the stain be washed away. The father had even
gone so far as to offer his own life as well m expiation.
When Kazuo's interrogation by the police chief was over,
and he was being led out of his office, he found himself face to
face with a battery of cameras and flash bulbs. The fact that
the most senior criminologist in the district had taken on the
case assured him of even more publicity. Kazuo's prison
warder told him: 'You wouldn't guess it to look at him, but
he's a master of judo. He's reached the seventh grade, one
grade higher than most judo teachers.'
Kazuo thought that in his present circumstances the police
rank and judo grade of his interrogator were really matters of
complete indifference to him; nevertheless, the awe in which
his guards held the police chief was reflected, in a way, in
their attitude towards himself. He was moved from the
remand jail into the larger and much better equipped Yamaita
prison. He was given a particularly spacious cell all to himself;
usually several prisoners were lodged in it. He was allowed,
indeed ordered, to write about his past. And so for the first
time Kazuo committed to paper the most important event of
his life, and one that he had been trying for five years to
forget. He wrote down his recollections of 6 August 1945.
It was very difficult for him to do so. He had often recalled
the past up to the moment when, coming back towards the
town from the Mitsubishi Works, he had met the blinded,
naked fugitives who had shouted: 'No further! Don't go into
that hell!' He had hitherto always lacked the courage to
summon up what had happened after that.
But now, now it had to be. From time to time he would
have to break off for long periods. Nonetheless, though
constantly interrupting himself, he wrote in a trembling hand:
The bridge was half destroyed, and hung in flames into
the river. So I ran to the iron railway bridge, a hundred yards
downstream. The wooden sleepers were burning here too,
but I ran along the red-hot metal rails. On the far side
crowds of maddened people were running like demented
lemmings, trying to get across the river. They were screaming,
and it sounded like one enormous voice. In the middle of the
bridge lay four or five bodies, unrecognizable as human
beings, but still moving. Then- skin hung from them like
strands of dark seaweed! Instead of noses, holes! Their ears
and hands were so swollen as to be shapeless. One of them
falls off the bridge! Now another! And then one after the
other they tumble into the river, helplessly exhausted. They
drowned, and made no attempt to save themselves. But there
were still fifty or sixty clinging to the red-hot rails. In their
terror of dying they clawed their way over one another, their
eyes hanging from their sockets, pushing one another into
the river, and screaming all the time.
'Somehow I got across the railway bridge, but on the far
bank there were mountains of corpses blocking the way
forward. These people must have been chased by die roaring
tongues of flame that caught them here. They were still
burning. I thought that they were all dead, but now they
began to whimper. A woman was calling for her husband. A
mother tor her child. And the flames sprang to life again and
gripped them pitilessly. My own eyebrows were singed, my
hands and my face burning. My only thought was that I must
get out of here, somehow, anyhow. I must fight my way
through the corpses. I pushed them aside, pulling on a head
to clear a passage. "Zuru, zuru" .., This contact with my
hands was loathsome. The skin on the face stuck to my
palms. Beneath the skin was something yellowish. I was
trembling all over, and I dropped the dead man's head, tried
to push his hand aside in order that I might get through ...
and that hand was nothing but bones beneath charred flesh,
and the skin off his face still stuck to me.
'I climbed on top of a pile of corpses. Layer upon layer of
them. Some were still moving, still alive. I had to get over
them. I had to climb over. There was no way of getting
through. I can still hear the cracking of their bones. At last
the mountain of the dead lay behind me. One of my feet was
aching horribly. Only now did I notice that I had lost a shoe.
My bare sole had been cut by glass splinters and was
bleeding. An open water tank, against air raids. I buried my
face in it. The water was boiling hot. I began to feel faint.
And thirst, such a thirst. There was no drop of sweat on my
desiccated body, but it was covered in blood and bits of
strangers' skin. I reeled and wanted to vomit. I took hold of
myself and automatically picked out the little stones that had
got into the wounds on my feet. Now the wounds began to
bleed again from horrible, black gashes. And the little stones
were in them again. There was no sense in taking them out.
Up to then I had at least been able to breathe and moan and
shout. But now my throat was so parched that I could
scarcely utter a sound. When I tried to shout it was as though
my throat was pierced by a thousand needles being driven
into an open wound. I mustn't think about the pain! I must
run, run, run, that was all - run for my life.
'What purpose did all this misery serve? I remembered
someone who always used to say: "This is an unjust war."
Could this be a divine punishment, because Japan had
wanted to win an Empire? Be that as it may, this was no time
to wonder about the past! Any second could decide my
future ... My body was expanding, as if it would burst at
any moment. Then, suddenly, something gigantic, something
black was collapsing on me. With an instinctive twist of my
body I had slipped out of the way in the nick of time. It was
the second storey of a house, entirely wrapped in twisting,
red flames. The evil spirits wanted to go on playing with my
life a bit longer...
'So tired that I thought I must die, I staggered on, step by
step, through this labyrinth of fire. I thought: "If I stop here
now, it's all up with me." Then there was somebody, close
by, calling: "Kazuo-san, please help me!" Whoever it was
knew my name, so it must be somebody I knew. But who?
Who was this thing? A girl? Her hair was burned off. Quite
naked. Only the rubber belt that had held up her trousers
still hung ridiculously about her hips. The lower part of her
body, which was smeared with blood and filth, was badly cut, a
deep wound. In such a condition I should not have even
recognized my own sister.
'I asked: "Who are you?"
'"I'm Sumiko."
'Then I knew. Sumiko! She lived just near us. But this
couldn't be she! Sumiko! She had been so beautiful a child
that we had nicknamed her "the white lily". I asked: "Is that
really who you are? The little Sumi-chan? Don't be scared. I'll
see you get home. Courage! Come along!"
'She was already so weak that she couldn't even take a
single step. I tore off my shirt so that she might at least hide
her'breasts and her shame. Only then did I try to rub away
the blood that had poured from her wound. The cut was
deeper even than I had first thought, but it was not bleeding
too badly. Only a thin trickle of fresh, bright red was making its
way down her trembling thigh.
'I tried to support Sumiko, but each step was so painful
for her that she cried aloud.
'"Sumi-chan, I know how it hurts. Please hold out."
'We struggled for a further ten yards, then stopped to rest
beside an open water tank, and wetted ourselves from head to
foot. But the heat from the flames was so great that we were
dry again instantly. It had been hard enough for me to get
through on my own; with the two of us it was now almost
impossible. Once again whole walls of dying people blocked
our path. They'd collapsed in the middle of the street. We
tried to creep between them and became entangled in electric
wires. When the poles burned or collapsed these wires had
fallen everywhere. Like metal snakes...
'I was at times close to giving in myself. Maybe I'd have
done so. But by telling Sumiko over and over again to keep
her courage up, I kept up my own. It was only because I had to
save her that I was able to save myself. And so at last we
reached Dobashi.'9
'The dead here were all schoolgirls. From the First Middle
School, the Shudo Middle School, the Methodist Middle
School. They were all there. Almost without exception. And a
few peasants too. They'd come in with carts, horses and
oxen to help with the evacuation of the girls' schools, which
should have been done long before.
'We stumbled on, often falling now. The smoke was here
growing so thick and biting that we could go no further.
With a heavy heart I said: "Sumi-chan, we can't go on this
way. We'll have to turn back and flee to Yokogawa."
'So we had to give up our attempt to go home, to our
parents. A hard decision to take. But we had no choice. Bit
by bit now the road was growing wider and less cluttered.
But again and again we met parents calling for their children, or
babies crying for their mothers. And then a detachment of
soldiers from the Second Western Regiment. All dead. But
still drawn up with military precision. At their head, his
uniform runic still recognizable, was their officer. He still
held his drawn sword in his hand, but the whole lower part
of his body was - white bones.
'We stumbled across the Yokogawa Bridge and then
headed north, till we reached the river bank near Misasa.
Here at last there was no longer any trace of burning, and
everything that happened to us in this externally undamaged
quarter was like a nightmare at midday ... We sat down
beside some bamboos on the river's edge. A few other
refugees were already lying there. How many hours had
passed since I had left the factory building in Furue? Five?
Ten? Or was it yesterday? For the first time I was conscious
of hunger.
'From a nearby clump I heard a voice crying: "Hi, you
there! Medicine for burns. Anyone who can still walk, come
and get it." They were crawling towards a man who was
shaking a thick liquid out of a petrol can. I let him pour some
of it into the palms of my hands. It was vegetable oil. I rubbed
it all over Sumiko's body, while she whimpered with pain.
Then I wiped my greasy hands on my own body. After which
we fell asleep, a sleep so deep that we might have been
unconscious.
'As dusk fell, the bamboo thicket came to life.
' "Water, water ... please ... give me water ... itai, itai20 ...
Mother! Kill me! Anything to stop this pain."
'More and more screams and groans filled the darkness. "The
devils! Water ... Just one drop ..." A woman jumped to her feet
and collapsed. Another began to cry insanely: "He ... ha ... ha
. . . Mitchan ... Look, there's my Mitchan ... She's running away
... Come here, Mhchiko ... Come here and I'll give you milk."
The young woman clutched at her shrunken breasts and thrust
them upwards, towards the sky. She laughed as she did so, and
her loosened hair tossed about her head. Now she fell upon the
bamboo stems, thrusting them aside and shaking them,
dementedly, as though from somewhere among their leaves the
child whom she had lost might come tumbling down at her
feet. But all that fluttered down were the leaves. They shone in
the light of the fires that were Hiroshima burning. The darker it
became, the more brilliantly did the flames flicker across to us.
'How many can have found refuge in this place? And how
many of them were to die here, before dawn broke? Maybe,
among them, Sumiko, who had pillowed her head upon my
chest. We put our arms around each other and waited for the
new day.
'Somehow - I still cannot say precisely what happened -we
at last made our way to the spot where my home had been. It
was now nothing but a heap of blackened rubble. Of my room,
which I had loved so much, and of the little verandah which
had stood in front of it, there was nothing to be seen whatever.
And there was no trace of mother, father,
my sister. I stood there, feeling nothing, incapable of making
any movement. If they were dead I must set about immediately searching for their mortal remains in order to cremate
them. I dug in the place where the kitchen had been, then
where I thought the sitting-room had stood. The wounds on
my hands opened again, but I dug on and on. The only thing
of Father's that I could find was his cigarette tin, and of
Mother's possessions nothing save her wrist-watch.
'This I put in my pocket as a memento ...
'We went on to Sumiko's house.
'"Water, water!" she whispered. "Please, Kazuo-san,
please, just a few drops! "But in this district there was nothing
except cinders and ashes.
* "Kazuo-san ... I ... can't. . . go ... on. It's all up with
me ... Thank you ... thank you for all you've done ...
You must go back ... and look ... for your mother .,."
'She had folded her hands in prayer, but I interrupted her
sobbing.
'"Have you gone mad? Get up! Don't you want to see
your parents again? If you give in now it'll have been all in
vain. Do you understand me? You must not die. You must
not." I had taken her by the shoulders and was shaking her.
'An old woman passed by.
'"Obasan,"21 I shouted rudely, "where's there water in
these parts?"
'She made it plain by her expression that my bad manners
displeased her, but at last she waved her hand and pointed
angrily: "Over that way."
'"Thank you," I cried after her, and to Sumiko I said:
"Sumi-chan, did you hear? Water, drinking water, just here.
Sumi-chan ... !" She smiled feebly. When I came back
with the water she was motionless. She already felt cold.
"Sumiko!" I cried, "Sumi-chan! Wake up! You've got to
live." I threw my arms about her and sprinkled water over
her face which was now smiling and relaxed. The drops ran
across her lips. The water she had longed for now trickled
uselessly down her chin.'
21
Old woman.
While Kazuo in prison was recalling the events that had
followed the dropping of the atom bomb - events that for
more than four years he had deliberately blotted out of his
memory - in the world beyond his prison walls the celebrations to mark the anniversary of that bombing on 6
August were, for the first time, forbidden by the authorities.
For the Occupying Powers and the Office for Public
Security feared lest these celebrations become the pretext
for a mass demonstration of protest against the Korean
War.
Every sort of public assembly was at this time strictly
forbidden. Only the howling of the recently reinstalled airraid
sirens at the precise hour of eight-fifteen was allowed as a
reminder of 'that day'. In order to ensure 'the security of public
order', police were drafted into Hiroshima from all the
surrounding districts. On that hot, sunny morning of 6 August,
Hiroshima resembled one huge army camp.
Despite all the precautionary measures taken by the police,
several columns of demonstrators did set out to march
through the city, while from the roof of the rebuilt Fukuya
department store thousands of leaflets fluttered down on the
city.
Among those whom the police, using their batons, forced
to disperse was Sankechi Toge. Pale and scarcely recovered
from his haemorrhage, he had left his sanatorium in order to
demonstrate for peace in the 'City of Death'.
He has described his experiences on this day in a poem
which was later to be read and recited throughout the length
and breadth of Japan. This is what he has to say about 6
August 1950, in Hiroshima, the 'City of Peace'.
They drive at us,
Drive at us From
here From there,
Pistol on hip,
The Police drive at us:
August the sixth nineteen fifty . •.
At the Deadmen's Tower on the bald-burned spot
The outflood of the citizens,
The flowers which they brought
Torn headless in the milling whirlpool,
When those with sweat-stained chinstraps
Let fly into the crowd ...
Let the doves fly high,
Let the peace bell ring
And the mayor's peace messages
Twisted in the wind,
The feast of freedom,
Blown to naught
Like fireworks ...
STRAW SANDALS
1
'... and so I request that I be sentenced to death.' In
interrogation after interrogation Kazuo M. begged the officials
who were preparing the case against him to include this -his
sole and last wish - in the protocol.
The stubbornness with which M. insisted on this unusual
request gave the legal officials cause to think. From the
prison warders* reports they were already well aware that the
moment he was left alone the prisoner Kazuo M. would
begin to pace nervously up and down his cell; that he tossed
and turned and talked in his sleep: briefly, that he showed all
the normal, visible symptoms of fear to be expected of a man
faced with death. But no sooner was he seated in the state
attorney's office than he began to act the part of a hardboiled criminal, who even underlined the fact that he killed
merely out of a vulgar lust for money. Had he had any other
motive? No, none.
This picture that he drew of himself did not in any way
correspond to that drawn by those witnesses who had known
Kazuo at all well. Something must therefore be wrong, and
the state attorney22 was determined to find why this particular
criminal, unlike all the others whom he had ever crossexamined, was so anxious to heap such guilt upon himself.
He therefore had Kazuo brought to his office once again,
and came straight to the point:
'You’ve hiding something from us. I've been told that you
were a volunteer in the Fire Service. I've also been told
about how you came to blows with the foreign soldiers.
Somebody has said that you used often to go to the cemetery
of the unknown victims of the atomic bomb, on Hijiyam
Hill, and that you used to talk to yourself
there, and cry. I have a feeling that all these
are significant facts, which are somehow
connected with what you did ...'
Kazuo remained stubbornly silent and
gazed out of the window behind the
attorney's chair, as if all this were no
concern of his.
'It's also obviously no mere accident
that your victim should have been a blackmarket operator. Listen to me, Kazuo, the
state attorney is not always and automatically
the enemy of the accused. So say what's on
your mind! Well ... ? Open your heart to
me ... tell me everything. You'll
feel much better and easier in yourself once
you've done that
>
There was still no word from Kazud, nor
so much as the flicker of an expression to
show that he had even heard what the other
man was saying. Now the state attorney
spoke sharply:
'If you stick to the statements you've been
making, there can only be one outcome for
you: the death sentence. But if you want to
save your life, you've got to come clean and
lay your cards on the table.'
As Kazuo said to me at a later date:
'For a moment I felt that I ought to tell the
man everything. But when he said "if you
want to save your life" I became furiously
angry. So he thought I was scared of dying! I
most certainly was not, and this I was
determined to show him.'
And Kazuo reacted accordingly. He
asked the state attorney:
'Is it certain that my written statement will be
accepted by the court as it now stands, if I
don't change it in any way ?'
'Quite certain,' the official replied. He was
utterly dumbfounded. He looked hard at
Kazuo, for he knew that if Kazuo were to
sign his statement as it now stood it was
tantamount to his signing his own death
warrant.
He was determined to try once more. He
therefore said to Kazuo:
'There's one piece of advice I'd like to
give you. I have here before me a plea for
clemency on your behalf. If everything that
it contains is true, it's obvious that you're no
ordinary criminal. As a child you were a keen painter. You
were a bookworm. You were said to be a gentle, dreamy
character. After the war you suddenly became an altogether
different person. In this plea for clemency it is stated that it's
scarcely possible to believe a person such as yourself could
have committed so brutal a murder. It doesn't make any sense
to me either, now that I've got to know you. I've heard that
you were very popular with your schoolmates. I've also heard
that when you met friends from your schooldays you would
protest, with tears in your eyes, against the frivolity and
immorality of the youth of today.
'I simply cannot believe that you should have lost your
passion and admiration for what is clean and fine ... The crime
of which you are accused certainly cannot be wiped out; it
happened, and that's that. But you must understand that my
job is to expose and to hold up to execration the crime itself,
and not necessarily the person who committed it ... So please
regard me as your friend ... I should like to treat you as a
human being. Can you not understand this even now?'
But Kazuo remained silent. Yet, as he later told me, these
words had moved him deeply. But he followed the dictates of
his 'stubborn heart'. He insisted on putting his 'signature' -a
finger-print - beneath these statements he had made, and in
them he had drawn his own portrait as a calculating and brutal
murderer who killed solely for money.
The examining judge had come close to the truth when he
guessed that Kazuo M. wished to use the State's institution
for justice for his own purpose, which was to commit suicide.
He had already thought of suicide when he had destroyed
his reading primer, and he had spoken of it in the Rain Poem
that he had written in the weeks immediately after the
Pikadm. A failed suicide attempt had been his answer to
Yukiko's infidelity.
The frivolity and absence of planning that
had characterized Kazuo's crime, the fact
that when he had actually got the stolen
money in his pocket he made no attempt to
get away, and finally his behaviour during the
examination of his case, all led to the
conclusion that it was the death wish that had
brought him to commit murder. It was
himself, not Yamaji, who was the real
victim, whom he had wished to hound to
death, and now the point had been reached...
According to the Japanese system the
accused and the witnesses do not all appear
together to give their evidence at a single trial.
The procedure is one of several weeks' or even
months* duration, during which time the
various aspects of the case are dealt with in
individual sessions. From October 1950 until
August 1951 Kazuo M. had to appear at no
less than six such 'open hearings'.
Meanwhile he spent a large part of the time
between these hearings writing his diary, in
which he expressed his bitter struggles and
fears:
'X Day, X Month, 1950. Light rain.
Looking at me: eyes filled with curiosity,
eyes filled with hatred, eyes filled with pity.
(Who has ever asked you to feel pity for
me?) The flashlights of the newspapermen
stab into my body. Look at Hie. I have no fear
of being condemned to death. You can be sure
of that. I bare my teeth at you all. And you
stare back at me in horror. I feel fine. Listen,
all of you! Do you know that the shaft of the
axe is hewn from that same oak tree that the
axe lays low? I wanted to smash everything
... Yes, everything ... Including my own
life ... And I've done it . . . Precisely that...
Yes, precisely that...
X Day, X Month, 1950. Father, father, I
long for my father. How they all stared at
me again today. And they all think I'm a great
criminal. And I act as if I were, as if I didn't
care what they think. But when the end
comes I'll surely weaken. For in reality I'm
no sort of iron man. I would like so very
much to draw closer to my fellow-men, to
love and be loved, but they have all avoided
me. The more I tried to draw closer to them,
the further they moved away from me. I was
always alone. Entirely alone with myself. If
the truth were told, I don't want to die at all. I
want to live, to live ...'
One night when he was turning sleeplessly on his plank bed,
the warder rattled his door.
'You in there - a visitor!'
Kazuo jumped up, pulled on his trousers and was about to
buckle his belt when he remembered that his belt had been
taken from him long ago. The ridiculous way in which he
had to clutch his trousers to him whenever he stood up or
took a few steps was for Kazuo the severest humiliation that
he had had to endure during this long period in prison.
There, in a corner of the examination room, huddled on a
chair with sunken head, was the visitor whom he had longed
for all these months, but who, he had long ago decided,
would never come to see him - his father.
They looked at one another. In Setsuo M.'s eyes there
was an expression of sorrow and despair, that expression
which was to be seen on those rare occasions when he
dropped his pose of rigid self-control and admitted: 'My
wife's family are decent people. But me? I'm a good-fornothing.'
'Kazuo, what have you done?' he said. 'I'm ashamed before
our forefathers and our fellow-men . . . I have even tried to
take my own life. As expiation, as atonement. But .. . I
couldn't even succeed in that.'
His voice took on a forced note of self-consciousness as
he went on:
'I shall make good your crime. I shall work and slave for
the community. Even if it kills me.'
Kazuo would have liked to throw his arms about his father,
but even now he dared not do so. Setsuo M. handed his son a
small parcel. 'I worked at it all night long. It is the last
present I shall ever give you ... But there is something more
that I wish to say to you: all this is not in fact your fault. I
and your mother - it is we who are to blame. Forgive your
mother. She tried her best to bring you up to be a decent
human being ... But me, your father, well may you curse
me ... Do you understand, Kazuo?
Enough, Kazuo. Only one last request: don't
be a weakling, my son.'
When his father had gone Kazuo was
allowed to undo the little parcel wrapped in
newspaper, under the supervision of the
warder. He hesitated, for this was a precious
moment. Never before had his father given
him a present. But the warder was growing
impatient, and told him to get on with it.
Slowly Kazuo undid the parcel. It contained
a pair of straw sandals with black and white
straps.
Kazuo saw the expression of horror on the
warder's face. It was a moment or two before
he realized what he had not understood when
first he opened his father's present. These
were sandals of the type that are tied to the
feet of corpses, before the funeral.
'Sandals for the dead.' The phrase reechoed through Kazuo's brain. 'Sandals for
the dead. So he wanted to show me that it is
essential I should die, that is the sort of man
my father has always been. Preferring to talk
in hints and riddles rather than come out and
say clearly what he meant or what it was that
he wanted done. A man who can say to his
own son: die! So he wishes his son to vanish
from this earth. To flee into nothingness. Any
other father would have driven the world mad
with his cries of "Save my son!" But not
my father, not mine!'
In his diary, when he came to write of
this decisive incident, Kazuo said:
'Last night I slept with the sandals in my
arms, the sandals my father brought me ...
When I awoke they were wet with my tears. It
is so long since I met my mother or my sister
in my dreams. Father, I'm wearing them
already, your sandals. Sometimes I rub them
on the floor, or knead them with my hands in
order that they may be entirely smooth and
may fit my feet to perfection ... I shall stand
beneath the guillotine and shall wear the
sandals proudly. For they are the only
expression of love that my father has ever
given me ...'
When my colleague, Kaoru Ogura, and I, after hunting
through the voluminous archives in the Judicial Department
of the Hiroshima district administration, finally found the
volume that contained the court record of The Kazuo M.
Case, we read of an event to which Kazuo himself had made
no reference either in his conversations with me or in his
own notes. But this event was to decide the fate of the
accused.
On 20 July 1950, Kazuo had been interrogated by the
prosecutor, and had said among other things:
'On January 2nd of this year I fell off a ladder and broke
both my arms as well as several ribs. Also after the fall I
suspected that I had damaged my skull. From then on I was
nervous and some people even said I was hysterical. Although I
had fallen so badly that I may well have slightly fractured
my skull, I never lost consciousness. But when I was discharged from hospital I could only move my arms with
difficulty, and as a result I lost all my will to live. On
February 14th I drank rat poison in an attempt to commit
suicide. But by early March my arms and also my ribs were
completely cured. Yet since my suicide attempt I had been
frightened of looking for work of any sort...'
At this point the officially appointed counsel for the
defence, Daikichi Honma, had intervened. It should be very
easy to obtain corroborative evidence to prove the truth of
what Kazuo M. had said about his accident, for it had taken
place in the presence of a large number of witnesses. On 6
January of each year a great public display by the Fire Service
takes place in most Japanese cities. This is called the Dezome
Skiki, and the bravest and most skilful firemen perform hairraising feats of balancing. The high point of these displays,
which take place in the open air, is always a demonstration of
acrobatics on bamboo ladders. Standing on one leg or
hanging by one foot, the firemen swing back and forth, high
in the sky, while unfurling brightlycoloured banners or twirling painted
umbrellas made of paper.
Already in December Kazuo had had a fall
while practising for the display. This was his
first practice, and the fall had been a nasty
one, but he had survived it unscathed. Since
then he had lacked assurance, and four
days before the display he had fallen again
with the serious results already referred to.
The lawyer for the defence could produce
evidence from relations and friends, all of
whom commented on Kazuo's 'peculiar
behaviour' since this fall. He also obtained
a relevant affidavit from the medical
authorities. The expert evidence supplied
by Dr Takashi Fujiwara of Okayama
University could hardly fail to carry weight;
the neurologist declared that it was entirely
possible that during the six months following
his accident, in consequence of the shock to
his brain, the accused might well have
shown 'certain changes to his mentality'.
In the hearing, neither M. nor his lawyer
ever referred to the deeper emotional
background behind the crime. Not a single
word was devoted to the spiritual shock
he had suffered at the time of the Pikadon,
nor to Kazuo's postwar experiences, though
these might well have been regarded as
mitigating circumstances.
The accused kept silent on this score
because for him the verdict had already been
pronounced - his father had spoken; while his
lawyer did not wish to make use of such
psychological arguments. For he was bound to
see that the judges were highly unlikely to
accept such a plea; were they to do so, the
other survivors of the atom bomb might well
advance similar arguments and claim freedom
to take the law into their own hands in any
moment of personal crisis.
State Attorney Kataoka had meanwhile
taken over the case for the prosecution from
the official whose saving hand Kazuo M.
had refused to take. On 16 August 1951
he demanded the death sentence for the
accused. The accused, he said, had prepared
his crime in cold blood. By his own
admission he had been ready, purely for
motives of financial gain, to kill not one but
several human beings: his was a sad example
of unstable behaviour among the younger
generation. Attorney Honma pleaded
'diminished powers of judgement' and had
some surprising further evidence to produce
in support of this plea: it had recently come to light that in
the month before the murder Kazuo M. had made two
further suicide attempts hitherto undisclosed. Once he had
stuck his head for hours on end into a gully-hole, while on
another occasion he had been found lying on the railway
lines. This was further proof that since his two falls from the
Fire Service ladders he had been temporarily living in a state
of mental aberration.
It was announced that the sentence on the 'Calpis murderer'
would be promulgated on 8 September 1951. Even before
the court was opened - it was Courtroom No. 2 in the new
District Courthouse which had been rebuilt since the atomic
bomb - the corridors were crowded. Yet the proceedings
could not be begun on time, for another case was being
heard in Courtroom No. 2 and had not yet been completed.
Among those who waited was Kazuo's father. He stood
with his face to the wall and tried to avoid recognition by the
crowd that pressed about him.
When he heard somebody speaking to him he jumped
nervously; he had hoped to be left alone with his shame and
his sorrow.
'I believe you're the young murderer's father?'
He looked up and saw an elderly woman standing before
him. He had never seen her before.
'I have come here to give him courage,' the old woman
said. 'I have heard that he is an Oya-koko-musuko, a young
man who looks after his parents. I do not believe he is a
criminal.'
These words had a profound effect upon Setsuo M., but
before he could thank the unknown woman the doors of the
courtroom had been thrown open and he had lost her in the
rush. Nor did he ever see her again.
'As always during the open hearing, I felt myself surrounded by countless eyes on every side,' Kazuo M. has
said. 'And my heart revolted against those eyes. All right,
stare at me, all of you, here I am, yes me, the
killer. Have a good look, don't mind about
me, you damned fools! You would never be
able to understand even one hundredth part of
what has happened within me.
'And then the verdict. Hundreds of eyes
fixed upon my back, eager and tense: It's:
LIFE IMPRISONMENT.
'Was I "happy"? . . . No, certainly not ...
"Unhappy"? No, nor that. "The wrong
solution" - that is closer to what I felt. For
what did "life imprisonment" mean except
"go on living"? When a man has lived in
such close proximity to death for as long as I
had, when he has said to himself day after
day: "It's that much nearer, the net is drawing
closer," it's hard for him to take a different
line ...
'The whole courtroom was buzzing with
voices now. As I left the Courthouse my
feelings were tending cautiously towards
relief, even happiness. But mingled with this
happiness there was a sort of indescribable
sadness ... I know now: I did it wrong ...
Everything.'
THE FISHCAKE PALACE
1
The 'Peace City' of Hiroshima only really began to
recover and to flourish when a new war, or, as it was
euphemistically called, 'the Korean Incident', came to
refill the city's chronically empty coffers. Prime
Minister Yoshida described as 'manna from heaven' the
large contracts for military supplies that were placed
with Japanese industry on behalf of the United
Nations forces fighting in Korea; up to then the
Japanese industries had been starved by the austerity
programme of the American financial adviser Dodge.
Hiroshima, as a former centre of the armament industry,
did particularly well out of all this. Since the end of
the war the atom-bombed city's old munition plants
had been engaged on the making of passenger ships,
railway lines and motor-vehicle transporters; at times it
had been extremely difficult to sell these. Now they
reverted to repairing jeeps, making spare parts for
machine-guns, assembling pontoon bridges and
renovating old World War II assault landing craft, which
had been rusting away since 1945 and which were now
urgently required for operations in the new war.
All the statistics for the years 1950 to 1952 reveal
how rapid was the rate of recovery of Hiroshima's
economy. A great deal of money was earned and
spent. The city shot upwards, the entertainment quarter
sported fine neon advertisements, and the bars and
brothels flourished as they had not done since the 'great
days'. A soldier in Korea, should he find the time to
examine the markings of the many olive-drab vehicles
that serviced the United Nations forces fighting the Reds,
would surely have been surprised to see, in white paint,
a name that only five years ago had been regarded as
the final and last word marking the end of war:
HIROSHIMA. For it was customary to mark each
reconditioned item of military equipment with the name
of the place where
it had been reborn and re-equipped for its
new baptism of fire.
If Hiroshima in the years immediately
following the Pikadon had recalled some goldmining town of the Wild West, now the city
centre, with its new flat-fronted, flat-topped
buildings of few or many storeys, its
omnipresent electric wires and its strident
advertisements, came more and more to
resemble any Californian 'Main Street'.
Even the covered shopping streets which
before the war had been confused, tumultuous
oriental bazaars were now more like the
elegant arcades of some Western metropolis.
Before the war Hiroshima had been a
typical provincial city with the element of
intimacy and cosiness that characterizes
such places. In the rest of Japan this west
coast garrison city was regarded as a rather
sleepy place, but not without a particular
charm all its own. Therefore in those days
officials had found it an outstandingly pleasant
spot to retire to. When, before 1940, the
Japanese spoke of the 'Hiroshima
atmosphere’ they meant a relaxed and
agreeable way of life.
Now that was all over and done with. The
charm that had marked the terrace
restaurants beside the Ohta, the famous
geisha houses, the idyllic private gardens
and the narrow twisting streets could not
be 'planned' anew. And when nowadays the
other Japanese spoke of Hiroshima, they often
referred to it as a 'second Chicago'. For it did
resemble the second city of America as
they had seen it in countless films.
Furthermore, the inhabitants of Hiroshima
themselves seemed to encourage this idea, in
that for years on end they regaled the readers
of the yellow press with a long-drawn-out
gangster war between the 'Oka Gang' and the
'Murakami Gang' - something that had never
before happened in Japan. It was not until
December 1952, when a battle between the
two gangs was fought out in the streets
that the police seriously intervened; even so
the influence of the underworld to be felt
throughout all local political life was
scarcely affected.
The years immediately after the war had
been characterized by large quantities of
temporary, rapidly-knocked-up booths;
with the beginning of prosperity more and
more permanent buildings were rising
towards the sky: banks,
shops, radio stations, newspaper buildings, office blocks. In
1950 the Catholics laid the foundation stone of a magnificent
'Cathedral of Peace'; the Buddhists announced the construction of a 'Temple of Peace': and Government authorities in
Tokyo began to build a complex of administrative buildings
which, Hiroshima learned with pride, would only be surpassed in size by the administrative buildings in the capital
itself. Even the university could at last repair its own severely
damaged edifice, and plant a 'Garden of Peace*, for which it
requested trees and shrubs from all the other centres of
learning throughout the world.
With their coffers bulging as a result of the war boom, the
various ministries were now able to produce the first payments of the grant that they had been obligated to give
Hiroshima ever since the passing of the 'Reconstruction Act
for the City of Peace' in 1949. Needless to say there were
countless conditions and restrictions as to how this money
might be spent. Mayor Hamai would have liked to use the
State funds available to him for the building, in the first
place, of schools, homes and for a reorganization of the
sewage system. But this he was not allowed to do. According
to the Finance and Reconstruction Ministries this special
grant was to be spent exclusively on projects that specifically
commemorated 6 August 1945, that is to say primarily
monuments and theatres.
As the masterpiece and spiritual hub of the 'City of Peace', a
'Garden of Peace' was to be laid out on an island encircled by
two arms of the Ohta. Here there were to be a memorial to
those who had died in the Pikadon, an atomic museum to
hold Professor Nagaoka's collection, which had hitherto been
lodged in an old barracks, and a 'Trade Fan- Exhibition
Hall*. A new 'Bridge of Peace' would enable the visitor to
reach this island of memory. A design for this hub of the
'New Hiroshima' was drawn up by Professor Tange, an
architect in the Corbusier Tradition; but when this was
submitted to the authorities in Tokyo, they immediately
declared that the proposal was both too ambitious and too
expensive. Mayor Hamai was not the man to be discouraged
by such rebuffs; he announced that the city would itself
contribute to the cost of the project in its
original form, even though this must mean a
certain delay in its completion.
The Government authorities made
further difficulties when they learned that
the proposed burial ground for the atomic
victims would contain the ashes of tens of
thousands who had thus died. They dug up an
ancient law according to which it was
forbidden to have graves in a public park. So
beneath the smooth grey stone of the
Cenotaph all that might be buried was a list of
names of those who had been killed or reported
missing.
But the land where the future 'Park of
Peace' was to be already contained one small
mass grave; in this were interred the remains
of the boys who had attended a Middle
School and who had died in the Pikadon.
Technically this grave should have been
removed before work on the park was
begun. But the authorities were tactful
enough to turn a blind eye and not to take
official cognizance of its existence. The
relatives of the dead boys wished to embellish
this grave with a small memorial of their own;
they were advised that they might only erect
this on a Sunday. For on that day the officials,
being off duty, could ignore this 'illegal action*.
The great Memorial to the Atomic
Victims, a beautiful, simple roof structure in
the style of old Japanese houses and made of
grey granite, was dedicated in August 1952.
The inscription carved into the stone reads:
Rest in peace. The mistake shall never be
made again. This led to an immediate protest,
for a section of Hiroshima's population
maintained that this could be interpreted as
admitting that the victims were at least in part
responsible for their fate. One infuriated
mother even requested that the name of her
three-year-old son be removed from the list of
victims' names to be buried beneath the
memorial; he had certainly been guilty of
no 'mistake', were it made again or not.
As Hiroshima became more and more just another large city,
so the gulf that separated the survivors of the bomb (the
higaisha) from the world in which they lived grew wider and
wider. The houses and streets might be rebuilt, but they
remained ruins, human ruins, falling ever more into decay
with each day that passed.
During 1947 and 1948 it had once again seemed that
those persons suffering from the radiation sickness would
recover after all. The number of miscarriages declined;
semen examination showed that some men rendered temporarily sterile were so no longer; cheloids were disappearing;
and the blood of those suffering from anaemia and allied
weaknesses was evidently returning to normal. Not only did
the official spokesmen of the Occupying Powers draw attention to this general improvement, but also certain Japanese
doctors felt free to publish prematurely optimistic reports. At
that time the illusion spread throughout the world that the
dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan had produced only
negligible long-term effects.
This false diagnosis of the development of the disease had
been encouraged by the censorship policy of the Allied
authorities ever since 1945. For not only were all references
to the atom bomb censored in the press, on the radio and in
books, but publications by Japanese scientists dealing with
the subject were also strictly controlled.
The rigid enforcement of a policy of secrecy (which
incidentally was applied in the United States as well) had
had certain results as early as 14 October 1945: on that day a
special unit of the United States Army, commanded by a
Colonel Mason and stationed at Ujina, close to Hiroshima,
had closed a 'Japanese Army Hospital for the Study and
Treatment of the Atomic Sickness* which had only recently
been opened in a former textile factory: all the research
material on which this special unit could lay its hands was
requisitioned. The Japanese doctors, who had opened this
clinic which specialized hi radiation sickness the first of its kind In the world - scarcely a
month before, were ordered to return to
Tokyo forthwith. They were able to save
most of their papers. For the next few
weeks they collaborated at Hakone Spa with
the staff doctors, and compiled an exclusive
report in which they gave the results of the
observations that they had made in
Hiroshima. They set and printed their
report themselves, on a small hand-press. So
on 30 November the first text-book ever to
deal with the medical results of atomic
bombardment was published. That is to say it
was circulated only in the medical faculties
and among specialists, who passed it from
hand to hand as if it were an illegal political
pamphlet. Perhaps that is why there is no
reference to this book in the otherwise
exhaustive bibliography put out by the
American
'Atomic
Bomb
Casualty
Commission'.
Throughout October and November 1945
such special teams suddenly appeared in all
the hospitals and university medical faculties
where the after-effects of the 'new bomb' had
been a subject of study since the previous
August. They not only confiscated
anatomical specimens which certain
scientists had removed from the corpses of the
atomic victims, but even seized a scientific
training film which showed Professor
Tamagawa dissecting corpses in a Hiroshima
hospital mortuary, as well as portraits that the
painter Moya had made from life of some
twenty victims of the radiation sickness.
Tamagawa recalls that he was instructed
not to discuss his work even with
Americans unless these were provided with
a special authorization.
These manoeuvres were a particularly
severe blow to Japanese scientists, for,
during the period when the Japanese Army
had been supreme, Japanese scientists had
regarded the freedom of research that
prevailed in the West as a model to be
imitated, and with the collapse of Japan they
had hoped that they too might now enjoy
similar rights and freedom. Instead of which
a number of them were forbidden either to
undertake research or to publish their findings,
and this prohibition was far more rigidly
enforced than had been any such regulations
during the period of the Army's rule. After a
special meeting at the Education Ministry in
1946
the world-famous atomic scientist Nishina, who had studied
and worked with Niels Bohr, had turned to the two
representatives of General MacArthur who were present,
and had said:
'We have no wish to research into how the atom bomb is
made and used, but simply into the results that atomic
bombardment produces. This would be a contribution to
science generally.'
The radiation expert, Professor Tsuzuki, used stronger
language:
'At this very moment, while I am talking to you, men and
women hi Hiroshima and Nagasaki are dying of a new
disease, the "atom-bomb sickness". We have not yet solved
its riddles. So long as we may not carry out our research and
get at the root of the problem, we shall not know how this
disease should be treated. From the point of view of humanity it
is inexcusable that research and publication concerning
scientific matters of a medical nature should be forbidden.'
In the months and years that followed, this strict policy of
security concerning the work being done by Japanese scientists
in biological and medical fields was, it is true, somewhat
relaxed, yet research scientists whose work had led them to
pessimistic conclusions even then did not dare publish these
results. For example, Professor Zan Watanabe of Hiroshima
University, who had carried out a major study on a group of
atomic victims, has stated that he did not publish his report
until after the end of the Occupation because the Americans
had said to him: ‘We do not forbid any sort of scientific
publication, but if we should get the impression that by
publishing you might cause harm to the Occupying Power,
you would be court-martialled at once. You must reckon on
this.'
That was why until the end of the Occupation in 1951 and
1952 no exact reports on the nature of the chronic radiation
sickness were available even hi Hiroshima; it was not known
for certain, or even with any high degree of probability, what
delayed after-effects could be ascribed to the atomic bomb.
As a result of this thousands went on living with the aftereffects of the Pikadon at work within their organisms. In only a
few cases - not the majority - could one perceive from the
beginning a clear-cut picture of some recognizable malady.
They would suffer from leukaemia, internal haemorrhages or
damage to the eyes - all of which could be ascribed with
more or less certainty to the effects of radio-activity.
Far greater was the number of those survivors whose
sufferings assumed a less easily defined form. They often
suffered from giddiness, headaches, retching, tiredness. With
them the most harmless maladies, normally over and done
with in a few days, became chronic. For example, if they
caught cold it took them far longer to get back to health than
other people; if they cut themselves the wound took longer to
heal. It seemed as though the 70,000-odd people who had
been within the two-mile radius about the bomb's epicentre
on 6 August 1945, and who had nevertheless survived the
catastrophe, had thereby been deprived of a considerable
portion of their living strength and of their recuperative
powers.
Mr Uematsu, Miss Woodstick’s father, had been the prey to
such ill-defined aches and pains ever since the Pikadon, nor
could he shake them off.
When the former factory owner, robbed of his small means
of livelihood, as of his health, by the atomic bomb, finally
took to his bed, it was the seventeen-year-old Tokie who had to
set about becoming the bread-winner for the family.
She reports:
'One day (it was snowing heavily), I set off for the
Unemployment Office ... While I waited there, I prayed
silently: I don't want to be a pampered youngest daughter
any more. The first firm that interviewed me: nothing doing.
The second: "We're not taking on any cripples." The third:
"References? Previous experience? Nothing? Sorry!"
I had begun with a tailor not far from our home, near
Hiroshima Station. Later I hobbled all the way to Koi,
between two and a half and three miles. My bad foot had lost
all feeling. This was my sixth interview. If I weren't taken
here, I'd decided to give up my plan of becoming a
seamstress. The proprietor was a gentle, friendly man. I
had almost forgotten that such people could still exist! I would
be earning money and at the same time learning how to sew.
It would be very hard work. Dear God, thank you!
The roof of the shop in which I worked with six other
girls was full of holes and we could see the sky. Sometimes it
was blue, but sometimes when the weather turned bad
there'd be such a draught from the roof and through the
floor that my feet would be like blocks of ice; and sitting for
such long hours at my sewing-machine gave me a backache, so
that I could scarcely move for the pain. But what I was
really afraid of was that they might say: "You can't sew
properly anyhow, on account of being a cripple." So I didn't
complain. I sewed on and on for just as long as my nerves
could stand it.
'In the workroom the atmosphere was one of superficial
comradeship. The girls sang pop songs, and laughed and
giggled for no reason. I myself could no longer even manage to
smile. Each day I was exhausted, nor could I ever recover
from the exhaustion of the day before. Besides, I was
constantly haunted by my terror of being sacked.
'I usually only reached home from my work at one or two
o'clock in the morning. My parents waited up for me, and
they'd have hot tea or something of the sort ready. I was
incapable of telling them about the unbearable or even the
merely irritating incidents of my day's work, because I had
no wish to worry them. So for them I remained even now
their little girl who knew how to behave properly, and we
smiled at one another just as we used to do ...
'The money that my sisters and I brought into the home
amounted in all to some 8,000 yen per month (approximately
£8 or $22). This was not enough to secure proper medical
attention for Father. Lying in bed - that was all the medical
treatment that he could afford.
'When Father had rested in this way for half a year he
announced one day that he was feeling better and got up. On
one occasion I overheard him saying to Mother: "It's terrible
for me that the children should have to work so hard." On
rare and exceptional occasions when I managed to get home
early, at seven or eight in the evening, I was able to do some
work for myself, sewing children's clothes. For these I got 16
yen (4d or 5 cents) a garment, but I was often so tired that I
simply could not bring myself to start work again. Then I
would just collapse on to my bed exhausted and massage my
leg.
'One hot summer's day Father took out a handcart and
pulled it through the streets. He had loaded the few tools
that remained to him from his old smithy on to the cart. I
wondered anxiously what he was planning to do. Evening
came. We were all worried, because he had not yet come
home. At last he arrived. He looked very tired, and he sat
down without a word. Only bit by bit did we learn that he
had spent the entire day dragging his handcart through the
town, repairing the pots and pans that strangers brought
him.
'I could imagine how hard it was for him to do his work in
the street, like a tinker. For he had always been so proud of
his skill as a steel smith. When we girls were tiny he had
often told us the story of his life. He had once worked in
Kamchatka and had lived with the natives there; he had with
his own hands helped to build the famous iron landing-stage at
Miyajima.
'When we saw him as he now was, his face so deathly
white and covered in sweat, we sisters swore that we would
work even harder than before. But struggle as we might, our
wages could not keep up with the rising prices. So I tried to
swallow my pride and visited the office that gives assistance
to the poor. Yet the official in the City Welfare Office
refused to take my visit seriously. "But I ask you," he said,
after referring to our former prosperity, "a family such as
yours cannot..”
'Every day now Father set out with his heavy handcart.
When he had to repair gutters Mother went with him. But
the work was too much for him, and in the autumn of 1952
he had to take to his bed again ... His condition grew wrorse
from day to day. My sisters and I worked longer and longer
overtime. Often my feet would go entirely numb from
working the treadle of my sewing-machine. Now my work
went on each day till midnight, and often till one in the
morning, and at home they were afraid that I too would
collapse ... So my sister made a confidential complaint to
the Employment Office. The owner of the garment factory -he
was my second employer; the first had gone bankrupt -
was sent for by the Employment Office and given a stiff
warning. With what result? He submitted false books, and,
from then on, black curtains were hung over the windows, so
that the people outside should not be able to see that we
were compelled to work at night. For the rest, there was no
change.
'On the last day of the year 1952 I set off for work in
really good spirits because I was so pleased about our New
Year's Day bonus. I had promised Father a pair of new getas
(wooden sandals), and I planned to pay Mother's debts in
the market. My sister, in anticipation, had already got credit
to the extent of 3,000 yen. With this we had bought rice and
promised to pay the rent. With anything that might be left
over we planned to celebrate the New Year.
'But instead of the bonus I expected, I found that I had
been dismissed, and all I got was the back pay due to me,
2,500 yen. The reason given for my dismissal was that I was
no good at my work. This upset me horribly, because I knew
that I had done my work well and carefully. How could I go
home with this ridiculously small sum of money? I was
absolutely determined to stand up for my rights.
'Even Father, who had always advised me to keep my
mouth shut and never to complain, was incensed now. He
shouted: "Your Father will go there himself, and speak to
these people!" But the excitement was too much for him. On
that New Year's Day he suffered a severe relapse.'
For how many of the 100,000-odd people who had survived
the atom bomb in Hiroshima was postwar life more or less
that of the Uematsu family? It will never be known for sure,
for most of the seizonsha (survivors) took care that their
suffering should remain hidden from all save their closest
relatives. At the beginning, those who had lived through 'that
day' often talked to one another of the horrors that they had
passed through in common, and indeed would even boast
about this on occasions. But now they kept silent. For almost
imperceptibly the attitude of the rest of their society towards
the survivors had changed. What yesterday had counted as a
distinction was today regarded as a blemish.
Public bathing establishments refused entry to men and
women whose bodies were disfigured by large, ugly cheloids;
there was an entirely unjustified rumour current that these
scars could be the source of infection. Matrimonial bureaux,
which arrange most of the marriages in Japan, informed
applicants from Hiroshima and Nagasaki that survivors of
the Pikadon were not acceptable as brides or grooms; it was
feared that they might father, or give birth to, deformed
children.
Most employees among the survivors, with the exception
of persons employed by the authorities, whose positions were
guaranteed by law, lost their jobs, for their ability to work
declined markedly. They usually suffered from giddiness,
defective memory, bad nerves and a general disinclination
for work. Once they were out of a job it was difficult, indeed
well-nigh impossible, for them to find another; nobody
wished to employ 'atomic cripples'.
So those who were still in work did their uttermost to hide
any manifestations of tiredness, or of feeling sick, for as long
as they could. For fear that while today they might be pitied
tomorrow they would be out on the street, those people did
not even dare any longer to complain of having a headache
or a cold. Even such of these as possessed the means dared
not go to the doctor, for they feared lest a rumour be spread
that they were suffering from the 'atomic sickness'. There
were occasions when not even the closest relatives of the
bread-winner were aware that he was growing sicker, until
he suddenly collapsed; only then would a doctor be summoned, and by that time it was usually too late.
Thousands tried to hide this new cause for shame, that
they were survivors of the Pikadon, by moving away, to
Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe or some other city. But this was of little
help to them. Every Japanese is followed by his papers, in
particular by his Family Book, wherever he may go, and thus
by the story of his past.
The most complete lack of understanding for those victims
of the atomic bomb who sickened years later was to be
encountered among the people who lived in the country
outside Hiroshima. There was, for example, the newlymarried peasant girl who came into the city to be examined
because she was suffering from precisely those symptoms
which usually marked the onset of the radiation sickness: a
humming in the ears, fainting, a tendency to tiredness, a
general weakening of the constitution. 'A young woman who
only eats and who can't work - that's a real misfortune.'
That is what they had been dinning into her ears for months
on end. At first her young husband had protected her against
the rest of his family, but when the village doctor had
announced that, so far as he could diagnose, she was suffering
from no known complaint, he too began to turn against her.
The girl was not sick enough to be admitted to hospital: on
the other hand she dared not return to her home. In vain she
begged: 'Please don't send me back. Please keep me here.'
But the doctors could not agree to this. The few public
hospitals in Hiroshima had not even sufficient beds for
persons who were seriously ill. No part of the reconstruction
subsidy had been ear-marked for the hospitals. The erection
of splendid, silent housefronts calculated to impress seemed
to the postwar generation a more urgent task than caring for
the sick who were suffering from a malady that was as yet
neither understood nor even recognized.
In the summer of 1949 Norman Cousins, the publisher of
the American periodical The Saturday Review of Literature
had been taken on a conducted tour of Hiroshima's hospitals
by Mayor Hamai. He was shocked by what he then saw, and a
little later he wrote:
'You saw beds held together with slabs of wood; nowhere
did you see sheets or pillows; you saw dirty bandages and
littered floors and rooms not much larger than closets with
four or five patients huddled together. You thought back to
what you saw in the DP camps in Germany. You looked in
on an operating room that seemed little better than a crude
abattoir ... You saw all this with unbelieving eyes and then
you had some idea of what Mayor Hamai meant when he
said that Hiroshima needed America's help to take care of its
sick.'
Only eighteen months after this visit of Norman Cousins, in
January 1951, the Americans opened a clinic on the top of
Hijiyama Hill, which commands a wide view over the new
city of Hiroshima that was then arising from the ashes. This
was the most modern and most perfectly equipped clinic in
all East Asia, The wide, smoothly asphalted road that ran
through the park to the aluminium and glass buildings, silvery in
the sunlight, had alone cost several million yen. Those
persons who had been politely invited to undergo a medical
examination were carried along this road in brand new
American cars or in fast jeeps. For many of them - and
particularly for the women and children - this was often
their first automobile ride.
Mayor Hamai had once warned the American officers who
insisted on building this institute on the sanctified ground of
the Hijiyama Military Cemetery that the populace of Hiroshima would never accept this. But the joy that at last a
special hospital for 'atomic illnesses' had been opened
succeeded, for the time being, in silencing any angry comments on that score. Even so, many a pious patient was
offended at the sight of the broken and overturned tombstones lying around the new buildings, and a certain comparison
inevitably came to mind. For not far away there was a small
graveyard where were buried those members of the French
military forces who had died of yellow fever in
Hiroshima at the time of the Boxer Rising. All through the
Second World War, even when the French were the enemies
of the Japanese, an elderly Japanese woman had at all times
cared for and looked after these graves.
The new complex of buildings, which overlooked the new
Hiroshima like some feudal castle, soon got a half-friendly,
half-ironic nickname. They called it the Fishcake Palace. And
indeed its half-rounded, two-storeyed buildings, resembling
Quonset huts in style, did recall those sausage-shaped fish
pasties so beloved of the Japanese.
A patient would here be thoroughly examined for a whole
day by the most outstanding specialists and in the most
perfectly hygienic conditions, and it would not cost him a
single yen. Indeed, the patient was even driven home and
deposited at his own front door without charge. It was like
something out of a fairy tale. There was only one snag:
though the patient's sufferings were diagnosed with the most
extreme thoroughness, nothing was done to cure them. If a
sick man should bring himself to ask: 'What do you advise,
Doctor? What can I do to get well again?' the doctor's reply
was always the same: 'This is not a therapeutic establishment
but a scientific institute, founded in collaboration with the
Japanese health authorities, with the exclusive object of
carrying out research. For treatment you must go to your
own doctors'.
As a result of the stir caused by the reports of two military
medical missions, the ABCC had been founded in 1947.
The American Defence Secretary, James Forrestal, had been
impressed by the arguments of specialists returning to the
USA from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and on 18 November
1946 he had written a letter to the President in which he
spoke of 'this unique opportunity for examining the medical
and biological effects of radiation'. Such a study, the
Secretary of Defence insisted, 'would be of the highest
significance for the United States'.
The 'unique opportunity' of which Forrestal had spoken
was used as effectively as was possible in view of the
money and technical personnel available. In the two years
immediately after the bomb, what research had been done
into radiation effects had been of an unsystematic nature.
Now this was all to be changed. In the two years that started
in 1948 two large-scale research projects were inaugurated,
one into the hereditary effect of radiation and the other into
its effect on children. During the following five years some
75,000 young people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were examined. By checking the lists held by the rationing authorities and in particular by compiling a list of pregnant women, who
received subsidiary rations - the research teams were able to
'follow up' pregnant women from the fifth month on. By cooperation with the midwives - who received a cash payment
for each birth notified - the proportion of babies born dead
and the progress of those born alive could be established
with a high degree of accuracy.
There was, for example, Project PE-18. Some 2,500
children aged five, six, eight and from ten to nineteen, who
had been exposed to radiation, were examined periodically:
the results were compared with those of similar examinations
carried out on 2,500 children of identical ages - 'Control
Children' they were called - whose parents had only recently
moved to Hiroshima or Nagasaki and who had therefore not
been subject to the effects of atomic radiation at all. Then, as
from July 1950, Project PE-52 was started. The object of
research here were the so-called 'First Trimester Children',
that is to say those whose mothers had been in one or other of
the 'laboratory cities', Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and had been
less than three months pregnant when the bombs were
dropped. Finally there was Project PE-49. This involved the
so-called 'Thousand Metre Children' or children who had
been less than one kilometre from the epicentre when the
bomb exploded on 6 August 1945.
It was not until January 1951, when the ABCC had moved
from its temporary headquarters (the Hall of Triumph in the
waterfront district of Ujina) to its fine new home that the
Adult Medical Programme which had been started during
the previous September could really get going in a big way.
Within the framework of this Project ME-55, it was planned
to examine, so far as this was possible, all those who had
survived from the 'Thousand Metre Zone', as well as a
'representative cross-section' of those who had been within a
radius of one to one-and-a-half thousand metres, and to
repeat this examination annually. This group would amount
in all to some 2,500 persons and these too were to be
compared with a similar group of 'control persons not
exposed to radiation'. In addition to these major projects
there was a considerable number of specialist teams engaged
on other tasks. These were sensibly camouflaged behind
code letters and numbers. For example there was HE-39
(research into leukaemia); OG-31 (sterility and infertility);
OG-35 (therapeutic abortion); ME-47 (research into eyedamage caused by radiation); SU-59 (burn scars). Behind
these letters and numbers were concealed all those agonies
that the atomic bomb had inflicted upon the people of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There were hundreds of such studies carried out, for the list
given above is only a minute fraction of them all. If one
examines the results of the research work carried out by the
ABCC one cannot but be impressed. During years of mass
examinations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki valuable discoveries
were made, and simultaneously new methods of examining
the health of large quantities of human beings were
developed. It was not only those men who specialized in the
young science of radiation biology who profited from this
massive research project; other branches on the tree of
science are also sure to derive great benefits from it for many
years to come. Never before in medical history has so
impressive a number of human beings - both sick and well been so thoroughly examined in so short a space of time in so
limited an area with a definite purpose in view.
This same undertaking assumes a very different colour
when it is examined within the social, political and psychological
framework in which it took place. Dark shadows are then
cast across the brilliant picture. Divorced from the
circumstances in which it was inaugurated and carried out,
this seems a great act of human magnanimity: if the background and circumstances are taken into account, however, it
must be regarded as a grossly callous, indeed an inhuman
performance.
The trouble began with the fact that the ABCC Clinic was
run by the Americans and almost entirely financed by the
US Atomic Energy Commission, an agency which was primarily and ultimately interested in the perfection of nuclear
weapons. The citizens of the same country that had dropped
the atomic bomb were now determined to find out at all
costs what the biological after-effects of this act had turned
out to be. This struck Japanese public opinion in the main as
tactless in the extreme. It also led to the disastrous conclusion, a
conclusion as erroneous as it was insulting, that cause and
effect linked the first act (the dropping of the bomb) with the
second (the scientific research into the bomb's after-effects).
People began to wonder whether in truth the citizens of
Hiroshima had been the victims of a strategically justifiable
act of war. Might it not be that they had suffered in the
interests of some outsize American scientific experiment?
This supposition appeared to be reinforced by certain highly
unfortunate reports that were published in some sectors of
the American press concerning the ABCC. For example, it
was said by these journalists that Hiroshima, Nagasaki and
the 'Control City' of Kure were the Commission's 'three
laboratories'.
This research was obviously of great importance to
humanity, for even in peace-time the danger of radiation was
bound to increase. The fact that this was carried out by
Americans, however, and with money supplied by the Atomic
Energy Commission, was aggravated by the researchers'
reluctance to treat - and if this were possible to cure - the
bomb's victims. This served to emphasize and increase the
victims' hostility to the whole project.
The creators of the ABCC had assumed that it was
possible simply to observe the people living on this patch of
sorely-tried and still inhabited land which the Japanese called
'The Place of Suffering*. They imagined that, in a place
where patients could get no medical treatment from their
own doctors, they could simply examine these 'interesting
cases' and, after establishing die fact that thousands of such
cases were suffering from this or that agony, just send them
home again without treatment or even the hope of treatment.
This surely showed a truly terrifying short-sightedness.23
23
The explanation and excuses as given by official American sources will be
found later in this book on pages 303-7.
Thus could it happen that the Hiroshima 'atomic clinic'
became a greater source of hatred than the bomb itself.
Whereas many citizens of the victimized city might have
strong views about the iniquity of the new weapon but yet be
prepared to excuse its use as a military act committed in wartime, they regarded the 'purely scientific' activities of the
ABCC as simply inexcusable.
As early as 1949, when the ABCC was still functioning in
comparative obscurity on the outskirts of the city with a
limited staff and limited objectives, the American Norman
Cousins had already recognized that the situation was one
that would lead to a crisis. After having visited the wretched
public hospitals of Hiroshima he felt compelled to publish
the following in the Saturday Review of Literature:
'... I thought of the millions of dollars being spent by the
United States in Hiroshima in the work of the Atomic Bomb
Casualty Commission - excellent work and important work,
for it can tell what happens to people in atomic warfare.
Nothing of those millions goes to treat the victims of the
atomic bomb. The Casualty Commission only examines
patients; it doesn't treat them. And you had the strange
spectacle of a man suffering from radioactive sickness getting
thousands of dollars' worth of analysis but not one cent of
treatment from the Commission.'
Back in New York after his visit to Hiroshima, this warmhearted journalist devoted a great deal of his energy to
helping the victims of Hiroshima. He did his best to see that a
hospital for the treatment of radiation diseases should be
built with privately collected funds. It was to be in the middle
of a 'Hiroshima Peace Centre' dedicated to World Peace:
Protestant pastor Kiyosho Tanimoto, who enjoyed a worldwide fame as the result of Hersey's great piece of reporting.
Hiroshima, had first suggested that this 'Centre' be created.
As early as August 1949, that is to say while Cousins was
still in Hiroshima, the foundation stone of such a 'Peace
Centre' had already been laid - on the site of the old feudal
castle where the lords of Hiroshima once had lived, and which
had been destroyed by the Pikadon. But the undertaking was
too grandiose to be completed solely with funds collected
privately. The building site reserved for the project remained
open ground.
Cousins had greater success with the project whereby
'atom orphans' were to be 'spiritually adopted' by American
foster-parents. (Owing to the Oriental Exclusion Act, which
formed part of the American immigration laws, actual adoption
was for the time being unfortunately impossible.) A few
hundred orphans received financial assistance from these
'foster-parents' in the United States, and some of them even
took the name of their American sponsors, men and women
whom they had never seen.
THE HELPERS
1
Throughout almost all the years 1951 to 1953 the pains and
the sickness that resulted from the long-term effects of the
atomic bomb were particularly in evidence in Hiroshima. As
could be subsequently established from the statistical evidence, this was the period of crisis for many of the illnesses
induced by radiation, such as leukaemia. It was common,
too, for so-called 'cataracts' now to appear in the eyes of the
survivors: small, black spots, of which an exceptionally large
number were to be found in the eye's crystalline lens.
The discovery of these 'radiation cataracts' was among the
first important results of the research being carried out by
the ABCC. One day while the doctors were sitting in their
cafeteria, one of the waitresses told them about a kitchen
maid who couldn't see properly. 'She was hurt in the Pikadon
but she recovered again completely. Recently something's
gone wrong with her eyes.' A doctor examined the girl and
even with his pocket ophthalmoscope he detected an unusual
black spot. 'The most important discovery in the history of
postwar Hiroshima had been made', according to a report in
Life. The journalist, whose style recalled that of a war
correspondent reporting from the front, went on to say:
'Here, suddenly and unexpectedly, it happened that Hatsue
became an eminent figure in the history of atomic warfare.'
Hermann J. Muller, the father of modern genetics, has
commented on this phenomenon of 'radiation cataract* in the
following words:
'In the people that were bombed a long time ago at
Hiroshima you can see a lot of little opaque points in many
of them in the lens of the eye where evidently cells have been
badly damaged. That damage did not appear until much
later, when the cell probably undertook to divide. The reason
you can see it there is because the lens is a transparent
tissue. I think there is reason to believe that this happens in
all the tissues of the body that contain cells subject to
division. These tissues would, therefore, be weakened. It is
true that other undamaged cells would tend to replenish the
damaged places. But that replenishment or regeneration, it is
to be expected, will not be complete and perfect. Therefore,
there is a certain amount of damage left. That damage you
can see, would be a generalized damage all over the body,
wherever there are these dividing tissues. Therefore, it
would be expressed as a weakening of resistance to disease
and infirmities of all kinds, somewhat like what occurs in
ageing ..,'
So it was really neither hypochondria nor the expression of
an 'atomic neurosis' - as their fellow-citizens maintained when the survivors complained repeatedly that 'they felt
unwell in every part of their bodies', that 'the devil's claws
had left their traces in each and every organ'. What upset
them almost more than their actual sufferings was the fact
that nobody seemed to know for sure what these sufferings
were caused by; indeed the very existence of these pains was
even now not recognized - and neither in Japan nor abroad
was any public authority prepared to help them.
Ichiro Kawamoto now attempted, with the totally inadequate resources at his disposal, to fill this gap as and when
he could. He did not first demand 'scientific proof that
these people were suffering. He simply did what he could to
help, without asking too many questions.
Years after the Pikadon, Ichiro himself began to feel the
after-effects of the digging that he had done when the city
was still infected by the bomb. But he always forced himself to
get up from his sick-bed, for there were others who
needed him, men and women more sick and more lonely
than himself. He would take one a little boiled fish to eat; to
another he would give a blanket; a third he would visit solely to
encourage and divert him with his conversation. Today he
would set about finding a place in an orphanage for a little
girl who was living all alone in a house inhabited by gangsters
and prostitutes; tomorrow he would visit a family which had
recently lost one of its members as a 'delayed-action’ victim of
the atom bomb, and would do his best to console them.
There was nothing planned or systematic about these
innumerable small acts of neighbourly love. Sometimes Ichiro
would forget all about one of his charges for days on end,
because at the moment another would seem to him more
important. Then he would suddenly remember, as he walked
along, and would change direction and would hurry to make
good his neglect. Once, so he told me, he arrived too late. A
young man by the name of I. had sickened a few weeks
earlier with leukaemia. By the time Kawamoto remembered
about him and went to see him, it was too late. The young
man had been taken off to hospital, where he had died.
To people of our age the impression made by a man such as
Ichiro Kawamoto may be old-fashioned, ridiculous, even
downright suspicious. Many people in Hiroshima, too, tried to
dismiss him in such terms. If a man is so anxious to help
others, does it not mean that in his own life and profession
he is a failure? Is he not simply anxious to assert his own
personality? Is he not motivated by some guilt sensation?
Men - and not only those living in Hiroshima - are nowadays
always ready with an explanation which will diminish, and
even denigrate, the good deeds of others; thus do they
cleverly disguise their shame at their own failure to do
likewise. The 'spirit of the age' appears to be incapable of
recognizing human decency and selflessness unconditionally.
But, as it happens, this highly improbable figure, Ichiro
Kawamoto, does in fact exist. Year after year his long,
worried face is to be seen in the barrack-like working-class
quarter of Hiroshima where the 'atom pariahs' live, and he
gives not a hoot for what people may say about him. If only
he could cheer them up a bit! He usually dresses up as Father
Christmas for the orphans of Skinsei Gakuen. Inevitably his
fancy dress made of red paper gets torn to shreds, and from
behind it there appears the very ordinary figure of a casual
labourer whose working trousers are not always immaculately
clean. The little children laugh, and clap their hands, and
throw their arms about their old friend. 'He's the only grown-up
who's never frightened me ...' one such parentless child once
said.
Kawamoto was also one of the founders of the Genbaku
higaisha no kai (the Association of Atomic Victims). Owing to
the initiative of the authoress Tomoe Yamashiro, fifteen
higaisha had first met together in August 1952. To begin
with they held their meetings in Pastor Tanimoto's church,
but some of them began to suspect that the pastor wished to
convert them to Christianity; so they preferred to go to the
shop of the souvenir salesman, Kikkawa, where, without any
sensation of shame and without any feeling that they must
excuse their condition to those who had had the good fortune to
be spared, they discussed those problems that concerned
them all. But from the general exchange of anecdotes concerning 'that day' something more gradually emerged, which
eventually took the form of a plan to inform public opinion
about the fate of 'atomic victims' and to bring pressure to
bear on the public authorities in an attempt that something
be done at last for those who now suffered through no fault
of their own.
A travelling theatrical company, The Shinkyo Dramatic
Group, donated all the takings of then1 performances in
Hiroshima to the 'Association', which was thus enabled to
open a small office where all those who had suffered as a
result of the bombing might come for advice. The first
secretary of The Association of Atomic Victims was Kawamoto's
friend Tokie Uematsu. Her salary came out of the monthly
contribution that the Association was now getting from
certain charitable business houses in Hiroshima.
Little 'Miss Woodstick' had long ceased to be the delicate,
over-sensitive being whom Ichiro had first learned to know a
few years back when they were both studying English at the
church school. Her experience in the struggle to survive, her
unspeakably hard years as a seamstress when Kawamoto had
scarcely ever managed to see her, and finally her father's
serious illness, had turned her into a determined, even a
stubborn, young woman, filled with energy and at times
positively masterful. Now every morning Tokie hobbled from
her parents' home in the Nishi Kaniyacho quarter to the
gasworks at the far end of the town where the office of the
'Association' was located; for she lacked the money to take a
tram. If it got very late, or the weather were exceptionally
bad, she would not return home at all, but would make a bed
for herself out of two chairs in the office.
Tokie received a theoretical salary of 4,500 yen per month.
But it was almost never paid to her, for the finances of the
'Association' were always in a bad way, particularly since the
rumour had got about that its members were Communists.
And when she got home her sister would ask her: 'Tokiechan, did you get paid today?'
'No, but tomorrow I'll insist.'
But she knew very well that that was the one thing she
would never do. Nor would there have been any point hi
insisting. So she had to pawn her overcoat after all, in order
to get the money to pay the rent. For she was determined to
hang on to this job just as long as she possibly could. Her
work as a seamstress had come to seem futile and senseless to
her; whereas here she had the feeling that she was really
doing something important. This helped her to put up with
all the pain and penury.
'When Dr Mitsuo Taketani came to Hiroshima in 1952
and explained scientifically the damage that can be caused by
radio-activity, I was astonished,' Tokie has said. 'If the people
among whom we lived cared nothing for us, if so many
atomic victims did not even take their condition seriously
themselves, the explanation was that the facts were not
known. Only now did we begin to suspect how horribly
protracted the sufferings inflicted on us by that inhuman
bomb must be. Until I attended his lectures, I myself had
had only a somewhat vague inkling of the "frightfulness";
now I began to understand more clearly.
'The victims now met in our office, a room that was let to
us by an "atom widow", who lived there with her deaf
mother and her three children. The old woman, who had
lost her hearing in the Pikadont was particularly anxious to
look after us. It was then that I learned to talk with my
hands, my eyes, and even, when the occasion arose, with my
feet. We, the survivors, did our best to console one another
mutually. Nevertheless, we heard over and over again such
defeatist remarks as: "It's all quite pointless," or "It's senseless even to open our mouths." But I wasn't going to be put
off as easily as that. "If we don't speak out now," I said,
"we'll have missed our last chance."
'I had to repeat this three or four times. We had to be
patient. After much hesitancy other "victims" began to speak
out. To begin with they were paralysed, as it were, by the
fact that each of them was entirely preoccupied with his own
predicament. Now one or another of them would occasionally
say to me: "You look frozen. Come and warm your hands at
the stove!" This was already a good sign. And when a letter
came from one of them saying that our meetings were for
him the happiest moments he had known since die Pikadon,
we even forgot our tiredness, our hunger, our lack of money
i
Towards the end of the winter of 1953, when the peach
trees were just coming into blossom, Father Uematsu's illness
took a sudden and decisive turn for the worse. 'He was
almost never conscious now,' Tokie recalls. 'Day after day
and night after night we listened to his groans and watched
his strength ebbing away.
Tour days before Father's death a man came from the
Electricity Company and threatened to switch off the current if
we did not pay our bill at once. Father could hardly speak any
more, but with tears in his eyes he stammered to the man:
"I much regret that I should have caused you such
inconvenience ..."
'And that is how he died, in the most abject poverty. If
only he had gone to a doctor in time! Perhaps he might have
been saved. But he worked and worked, until he had reached
the end of his tether.
'The atom bomb had begun by robbing Father of his
livelihood. It ended by taking his life as well.
'On the day of the funeral, which was the 9th of March, a
jeep came from the ABCC. The man asked if they might
carry out a post-mortem on Father's body. They said it was
of importance to humanity, and that Father would certainly
not have objected.
'It was they who had dropped the atom bomb which made
the last years of his life one long misery. They were guilty
that he had had to work until he was completely finished and
done for. And now they came to our house and even
demanded that we hand over his poor, dead body.'
'I shall not hand my dead father over to you.' Tokie
Uematsu's anger was under control, but so great was it that
her voice was scarcely audible. That was what she said to the
men called 'contactors' who studied the announcements of
deaths in the papers and who, as a routine matter, visited
every family in which the dead person might be suspected of
having had the 'atomic sickness'. The 'contactors' expressed
their sympathy in uncommonly courteous fashion, and on the
form that they had brought with them they wrote the word
Ref., which was their abbreviation for 'refusal*. As the passive
resistance against the ABCC increased in strength, the file
containing the 'refusals' grew and grew. The statisticians of
the ABCC would now add to this file the name of Uematsusan. He was one of those who 'owing to the prejudice of his
family' must be regarded as lost to science.
The first person outside her immediate family to whom
Tokie told the news that her father had breathed his last was
Ichiro Kawamoto. During the past two years they had
frequently not met for days on end, and nowadays they never
discussed their relationship. This visit in the early hours of
the morning was, in fact, Tokie's first open declaration of love
for Ichiro. Thenceforth they both knew that they belonged to
one another.
Ichiro had taken it upon himself to provide the money
needed for the funeral. And he succeeded in borrowing from
his friends, a few yen here a few there, while the Uematsu
family's neighbours also contributed what they could. So a
considerable sum was eventually collected and the unfortunate Uematsu-san did not after all have to be buried in a
pauper's grave.
On the day of the funeral Ichiro suddenly fainted while
travelling by tram. That same evening he heard that at
precisely the hour on which he had lost consciousness the
poet Sankichi Toge had died on the operating table. The
nurses in his sanatorium had disobeyed instructions concerning
their authority to give blood to patients, in the hope that by
so doing they might save their patient, who had lost such a
very great deal of blood. The post-mortem later carried out
produced extremely surprising results. It was not merely his
old lung malady that had led to Toge's death but also
radiation damage caused by the Pikadon. Though he more
than anyone else had devoted the last years of his life to the
struggle against the atomic danger, it had never occurred to
him that he too was suffering from the weird malady that
afflicted so many of the survivors of 6 August 1945.
Kawamoto had first met Toge at the premiere of a Japanese
antiwar film in 1950. In the discussion that followed the
performance Ichiro had also spoken, and had said that in our
age the promise of peace offered by Christianity was of the
greatest importance - even though the so-called 'Christian
nations' did not seem to take their religion seriously. These
remarks had interested Toge, who had then sought out
Ichiro.
Since then they had been very closely linked. Now that
Toge had gone, it became plain to Kawamoto that it was his
duty to continue his dead friend's work, even though he
lacked skill, charm and education, while Toge had been a
highly literate, noble and famous man. That work was the
enlightenment of public opinion concerning the fate of the
atomic victims, who were themselves forced to keep silent,
starve and die.
Thus a new period began in the life of Ichiro Kawamato.
The silent helper became an outspoken publicist, the Samaritan
a propagandist. The climate of the age was conducive to this.
Since the end of the Occupation a powerful 'Peace
Movement' had come into existence in Hiroshima. But more
important than this, in the other cities of Japan people now
began to be preoccupied with Hiroshima. In August of 1952, a
few months after the Peace Treaty with the United States
was ratified, the large Japanese magazine called Asahi Graphic
had published a special number containing pictures which
the censorship of the Occupying Powers had previously
banned. These were technically imperfect and often blurred
or scratched snapshots taken immediately after the bomb
had been dropped. Nevertheless the impression created by
these pictures of hell was truly enormous. They let loose a
wave of horror throughout Japan and aroused great sympathy
for the victims of the Pikadon. Now, in rapid succession,
there appeared articles, eye-witness accounts, novels and
finally films dealing with the subject.
In late May 1953 the scriptwriter, director and producer
of the film called Hiroshima, which was to cause such a
tremendous stir, visited the Pikadon city. They wished to
reconstruct the scene of the atomic disaster on the spot, in
order to obtain the maximum realism. Kawamoto immediately
got in touch with these film people and offered his services
as technical adviser.
'On the following day I had my head shaved, so that I
might - without pay, I may say - be one of the many extras',
he says. *My friends at the Saka Electricity Works and the
children all laughed at my shaven priest's head, which must
have looked very funny. I dug out the helmet which we had
had to take to work during the war, and collected all the old
rags that might come in useful, and I took all these over to
the headquarters of the film people.
'The first scene was supposed to show the crowds fleeing
towards Hijiyama Hill. Together with a woman who worked at
the Shudoin Orphanage and six of her orphans, I went to the
Labour Office. When we got there, we found that a
number of actors made up like "atom ghosts" had already
arrived. Even I was horrified by their make-up. At the sight
of them the little children were absolutely terrified and began
to tremble all over. "Let's go, please let's go. I'm frightened,"
they began to scream through their tears. I had to calm down
the little ones, and kept saying to them, "But it's only a game ...
We're playing at ghosts." Then I bought them all some
caramel candies and they quietened down. Finally they were
even quite happy to let the make-up men disguise them as
the children of these "ghosts", as the children of that frightful
day. We tore into rags the clothes that had been collected
from the Women's Association and from the schools. We
even half burned them and smeared them with rust and
wood ashes. We painted our bodies brown and black, and I
rubbed ash on to my priestly pate.
'Finally we all set off for the location, in Hijiyama. The
wood that had been made ready was set alight. . . In front of
an air-raid shelter the film people poured out a black fluid. A
"corpse" was to fall on top of other "corpses". Then the
great crowd had to stumble past, with heads and arms
hanging, and they had to keep on doing this, again and
again, until they got it quite right and the scene could finally
be "shot".
'To begin with, it was all just a game. People would laugh at
the rags and make-up of the others. Many of the extras had
only come here for the fun of the thing. But with people who
really had suffered on that day, then it was quite another story.
Suddenly the horror, the immeasurable agony, of "that day"
was rekindled. We ran as if our lives really were again in
peril. Some began to scream their anguish aloud at the top of
their voices, others to tremble all over with fury and shake their
fists at the sky. We stumbled, fell over one another, and
women and children on their backs were trampled underfoot
in front of the air-raid shelter. One actress's clothes caught
fire ...
'All in all over one hundred thousand people acted as
extras, without pay, in the making of that film.'
'We sold the Tatami from our rooms. We sold the furniture
to buy rice. Finally we even ripped up the floorboards and
burned them in order to keep warm.' Thus does Tokie
describe the poverty that prevailed in the Uematsu household
after the expense of her father's funeral had swallowed all
that was left of their savings. 'I simply couldn't bear to look at
Mother's lined, grey face any more. And the day was
drawing closer when there would be nothing whatsoever left
to sell or burn.' So Tokie was forced at last to decide that
she must give up her job as secretary of the Association
of Atomic Victims and find work for which she would
receive regular pay.
'At the next street corner there was an extremely
noisy establishment,' she says. 'People were shouting one
another down in there and in addition there was dance
music blaring out from early morning till late at night. It was
a new Pachinko saloon, only recently opened. The owner
told me at once that he had no use for anyone with a
crippled leg because, in the sort of jobs he had to offer, his
employees were standing or walking about all day long.
But I begged him, and so desperately, that at last he
agreed to take me on.
'All the other girls who had to work there dreaded the
daylight, either because the debt-collectors were after them,
or because they had such hideous burn-scars as a result of
the Pikadon that they could only hope to get the sort of job
where no one ever saw their faces. We worked on the far
side of a wall behind the pinball machines. There was a
narrow passage, not more than eighteen inches wide. Each of
us had to look after twenty of these one-armed bandits,
which growled, clattered and spat as if they really were alive.
We had to feed them with new ammunition, those little
silvery balls that cost 2 yen apiece. These balls were packed
in cartons of five hundred, and the girls had to fetch
them down from an upper floor, where they were
cleaned and polished, to our row of machines. When I
heard this I was terrified, because the weight of such a
carton would be far too great for me to carry - and
another thing, with my bad right leg I could scarcely even
manage the stairs. Did this mean I'd have to give up the job
at once? They all laughed at me, but one girl was sorry
for me and from then on she lugged the heavy cartons
down to my place of work for me every day. I shall never
forget that girl.
'We were woken at half past six each morning and just
had time to wash our faces before the day's work began.
By the time we had distributed the little steel balls
among the machines - and we had to make absolutely
sure that each one got exactly the same number of balls we were already bathed in sweat. At seven o'clock sharp
the "saloon" was opened and many gamblers came
pouring in at once, even at
that early hour. They had obviously been standing about
outside, waiting for the doors to open.
'At ten o'clock we were given time off for breakfast, and at
three in the afternoon we got our dinner, and our evening
meal was at eight. We never closed before eleven o'clock at
night ... During the sixteen hours that the "saloon" was
open, we got only two hours off, in all. Our living and
sleeping quarters were in the attic. The ceiling there was so
low that not even a small person could stand upright anywhere. The sun beat down on the tiled roof, and the attic
was always hot and stuffy. There were only small windows,
facing west and east, and these gave so little light that it was
impossible either to see or to read up there, even at midday.
'In this place, which had room for six human beings at the
most, twelve "Pachmko girls" slept. Our mattresses were on
the floor and we had to clamber over one another to reach
them. None of us even possessed a locker. We were kept up
there as if we were in prison. If one of us wanted to go out,
to buy something, she had first to get permission. Anyone
wishing to post a letter was not even allowed to put it in the
letter-box herself.
'At first I could not understand why we were deprived of
our freedom in this way. But bit by bit I began to see why.
We simply were not trusted. It could happen that one of us
might come to a secret arrangement with one of the gamblers
and pass him balls which, when exchanged at the counter
against "prizes", were as good as cash. Each of us was told to
spy on the other girls. There was even an arrangement
whereby, if one girl should report another for doing anything
wrong, the stool-pigeon would receive half the other girl's
monthly pay.
'Most of the girls had no religion, nor did they give any
thought to their lives or to the world around them. Obviously
all that they were capable of thinking about was food and
about what they would eventually buy with the money they
24
It was against the law for the gambling saloons to hand out cash as
Ptuhinko prizes. The buying in of the prizes that they did distribute became a
profitable subsidiary racket for the criminal gangs active in Hiroshima (the
Oka-gumi and the Murakami-gumi). They would sell back these prizes to die
gambling saloons, at a considerable profit needless to say.
were saving. Their favourite topic of conversation was what
clothes they would wear and what sort of jewellery and so on
they would bedeck themselves with. When Ichiro sent me a
claret-coloured ribbon, which I sewed on to my white pullover that was far too tight for me, they all copied me and
managed to get hold of identical ribbons, in the identical
colour. When they talked to one another their conversation
consisted almost exclusively of spiteful and nasty remarks
about the other girls who were not present. The only thing
that impressed them was being well dressed. Those girls
whose bodies were scarred by a cheloid or some other mark
left by the Pikadon were not even allowed to hang their
laundry up to dry near the other girls' clothes, and the plates
off which they ate were kept away from the rest and were
washed up separately. But when I told these ill-treated and
despised girls that they ought to join the "Association of
Atomic Victims" they simply made a bored face.
'Once the gambling machines had been cleaned and the
floor washed, that is to say at about midnight, we were
allowed to go to the public baths. That was the best time of
the day. By the time we had walked "home" from the
baths it was usually about two o'clock in the morning. Our
conversation revolved around an unending theme: when
would we be able to shake the dust of this place from our
feet? This was a subject of which we could never have
enough.
'Every three days I got a letter from Ichiro. He wrote me
about the Higaisha no kai, about the friends we had in
common, about life outside. Three times I had to change my
job and find work in another Pachmko. Once because I
advised a man who had already lost a thousand yen to stop
playing. The boss happened to be standing close by and
heard this. He summoned me into his office and accused me
of damaging his business. When I defended myself he hit me
in the face as hard as he could. So I decided then and there
that in future I'd keep my mouth shut. But I could only keep
that up for a short time. I began to hate myself. I simply
could not bear not saying what had to be said, what I thought.
'But at long last the time came when I was able to escape
from this abyss, up into the sunshine once again. One of the
girls I worked with had got the sack, and she told me that
she planned to try her luck as a seamstress, working on her
own. If she should succeed in making a go of it, she'd get in
touch with me. And in fact one day I got a letter from her.
She said: "You can risk it. Come on."
'But when I had stopped working in the Pachinko saloon I
was far too exhausted at first to do anything at all. For ten
whole days I thought of nothing, read nothing, but simply
slept and slept and slept. And when at last I began to stop
feeling so totally exhausted, I started to think about the life
I'd been leading up to now and about what my future way
should be. "From now on I'm going to be cleverer than the
others," I said to myself. But who was I, to talk like this? Was I
somehow better than the other girls? I was a poor deluded
fool.'
In November of the year 1953 Ichiro Kawamoto made up his
mind to take a decisive step. He gave up the job he had held
for so many years with the Saka Electricity Works because
he wanted to be able to devote more time and energy to his
other activities, activities which had come to seem increasingly
important to him and which he now described to himself as
his 'services to society'.
Such a decision in over-populated Japan, where unemployment is a chronic and perpetual scourge, had far more
significance than would a similar decision taken in any other
country. Here a man who has been apprenticed in a sound
concern, and has proved himself as a good worker, will
normally be content to be employed by that firm until his
working days are over, for though-his wages may be small
they will at least be secure; because even in times of crisis a
Japanese businessman, in order to 'save face', will do everything in his power to avoid dismissing his regular employees.
But a man who, having secured such a lifelong job, should
then give it up or otherwise lose it will have a very hard time
ever obtaining another secure niche in the social framework.
His workmates and finally even his department head visited
Kawamoto in his home and did their best to persuade him to
give up this 'crazy idea'. Even his friends, the people who
relied on him for help, and the sick, warned him. An
established job with a good, firm, steady wages, gradual
promotion - that was what they were all longing for, in vain.
How could any man deliberately throw away such good luck
and let himself fall into the state of terrible insecurity which
was all that the swamplands at the base of society had to offer?
Ichiro promised his advisers that he would think it all out
carefully once again. On 29 November 1953 he shut himself
up in his room and thought about it all through the night. 'Will
I have the courage to live in poverty and insecurity?' he asked
himself. 'As a casual labourer I shall have to do work for which
I am physically far too weak.'
Now he recalled the conversations that he had had with
Mary Macmillan in recent years. This was the white-haired
missionary whose public acceptance of America's guilt for the
atrocity of 6 August had moved him so deeply in 1949, at the
very time when he was beginning to despair of Christianity.
Since then she had become his closest friend, apart from
Tokie. In the course of his visits to this good, active, invariably
cheerful woman in her modest home, Kawamoto had come to
the conclusion that the reason why the promises given in the
Gospels had not been fulfilled was solely due to the fact that
not enough people were really prepared to live their lives
according to the Christian doctrine. Did it not say: 'Be like the
lilies of the field'?
Kawamoto prayed until it was bright daylight, and with an
ardour such as he had never felt before. Then he told his
friends that his decision was now irrevocable. That was what
he had decided, and that was how it was going to be. Later
Ichiro was to receive offers of employment from various
Christian organizations, welfare institutions and also from the
financially sound 'Anti-Atom Bomb Movement*. He turned
them all down because he did not wish his 'service' to be
degraded to a bread-winning job.
During the course of that night Ichiro had made another
major decision. But it took him over a week before he could
put this one into action.
'On 30 November I finally resigned my job,' he says. 'And
on or about 8 December I won a human heart - I asked
Miss Uematsu to become my wife.'
Since Mr Uematsu's death Kawamoto had not always had
an easy time with his girl-friend. She was going through a
phase of doubt, of weariness with living, of contempt for
human beings, which resembled in some respects a similar
phase through which Kazuo M. had passed in the course of
his life. Looking back on this period today, Tokie remembers:
'At that time I was filled with hatred, rage and a longing
for revenge. What I hated above all was that country which
had dropped the bomb and which was even now making new
ones. I had truly attempted to believe in God, but now the
divine message was no longer reaching me. That at least is
the way it was during that period of my life. I threw my Bible
into the garbage can.'
But, unlike Kazuo, Tokie had a human being at her side
ready to catch her when she fell. 'In those days Ichiro was
worried, and kept giving me sidelong looks,' she recalls. 'He
wouldn't let it all confuse him, though, and he continued to
follow steadily along the path he knew to be the right one. I
envied Ichiro-san his certainty, and even hated him for it at
times. And I did the craziest things, simply in order to try
and give him a jolt. But whatever I did or said, Ichiro always
forgave me. And that was how his love for me saved me from
really going to pieces. If he had lost patience with me at that
time, I don't know what would have become of me.'
Maybe Kawamoto proposed marriage to his girl-friend in
order to give her that feeling of being protected and cared
for which she had lacked ever since her father's death. It
made her happy, and she accepted at once. And so the two
of them began to make plans, discussing their future life
together for hours on end. Another thing they had to work
out was how they should break the news to Tokie's mother.
'I tried to practise the traditional formalities in which it is
customary for a suitor to request the parents for a girl's
hand,' Kawamoto says, 'But when I spoke them aloud to
myself a few times I kept getting them wrong, falling over my
words and having to start from the beginning all over again.
Finally I'd got it pretty well by heart, and I hurried to the
Uematsu family's home.
*My heart was pounding.
'"Please do it properly," Uematsu-san whispered to me.
Then she acted as though her only interest in all the world
was the rice that she was busily cooking on the stove.
'When I pushed back the papersliding door, I found her
mother seated beside the hibachi (charcoal stove). I
stammered: "Oh ... I'm here, to make a friendly request of
you..."
(
"What is it?"
'"Oh, er ... Toki-chan, Toki-chan ..."
'"Yes, what about her?"
'"Toki-chan . . . I want very much ..."
"You mean you want to have Toki-chan? Well, since it's
you, if you want her . . . all you have to do is come and take
her ..”
'"Yes, yes, that's it. Thank you, thank you!" 'I had hardly
finished stammering my thanks before I ran
off, into the next room, to tell Uematsu-san how it had gone.
We were filled with happiness, and we took one another by
the hand, both hands.'
COLD HEARTS
1
At dawn on 1 March 1954 an accident took place thousands of
miles from Hiroshima which was nevertheless to be of the
greatest consequence for the 'survivors' living in that city.
The Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky
Dragon No. 5) was in the midst of the Pacific when it found
itself caught in a highly unusual 'snow storm'. It was not
until several days later, when the ship had returned to its
home port of Yaizu, that the truth about this 'snow storm'
came out. It had been radio-active, the 'fall-out' from the
most powerful hydrogen bomb so far detonated by the
Americans on the Bikini Atoll.
The fate of the Lucky Dragon's twenty-three crew members
excited Japanese public opinion more than any other event
since the end of the war. For more than six months the
newspapers, magazines, radio and television services devoted
more attention to the so-called ski no hat (death ashes) and
their after-effects as these became gradually apparent, and to
the first victims of the H-bomb now lying in two Tokyo
hospitals, than to any other single subject. The progress of
these men suffering from radio-active infection was reported
in the greatest detail as it went through its various phases.
Public opinion was kept fully informed. When the condition of
one member of the crew, the wireless operator Kuboyama,
grew so serious that it was feared he would not survive, the
public became so absorbed by his story that millions of
people wished to know several times each day what his
blood-count now was and how fast his pulse was beating.
For the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alone there
was nothing new in the reports from the hospitals concerning
the crew of the Lucky Dragon. They had had to endure the
agonies and surprises of the 'radiation sickness' in their own
bodies ever since 1945. Hitherto public opinion had not
really taken their stories seriously. The few higaisha who had
not been prepared to suffer in silence, or to hide, were
described as 'people suffering from imaginary complaints', or
even as 'professional patients', whose only motive was to
make themselves appear interesting by putting on long faces
or, what was worse, to extract money from the pockets of
sympathetic persons. Indeed there was even a phrase current at
the time for such behaviour: 'selling the atom bomb'.
'Now at last they'll believe us,' the atom-bomb victims of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki said with a sigh of relief as they
read the reports about the Lucky Dragon and its crew. They
wrote encouraging letters to the twenty-three crew members in
their hospitals, and two seizonshas even compiled a sort of
brochure for them, giving practical advice and entitled: How to
Survive the Atom Bomb. But such sympathy was not
altogether unalloyed with envy, as was perhaps inevitable.
Not a tithe of the attention being now bestowed upon the
men of the Lucky Dragon had ever been given to them, the
'atomic victims' of 1945, although many of them had been
far sicker and far more in need of help than the sailors
'fortunate in their misfortune'. And they quoted the old
saying: 'The first crow flew off ahead but the second crow
gobbled up all the food'.
Once again the voices of those who had survived the
Pikadon were raised in anguish: 'Help us, please! For almost
ten years now we have been suffering from this weird sickness ...
We are an entirely new category of war-wounded, and we
ask that we be given our rights. We want help!' However, only
a tiny minority dared advance such claims. The answer they
received was a slander that had become common
throughout the whole world since the beginning of the cold
war; here, as everywhere else, it was used as a psychological
weapon to silence every sort of social protest. For it was
rumoured that, behind these revived protests by the atomsick, sinister wire-pullers were at work: Communist agitators
and nothing more. And this invention was, naturally, quite
susceptible to subsequent 'proof. People in Moscow and
Peking had more sensitive ears than those of Tokyo and
Washington; they hearkened to those appeals. As a result the
Communist Governments immediately exploited the new
situation by making a gesture which must make a great
impression throughout all Asia. They gave seven and a half
million yen for the treatment and cure of the Japanese atomic
victims - a sum of money, incidentally, which must appear
negligible in the total propaganda budget of a great power,
for at that time this amounted to some $21,000, or about
£7,500. This became the basis of a charitable fund which at
long last was created in order that something might be done
for the survivors.
Public opinion in Japan was aroused by the accident to the
Lucky Dragon. The emotions thus let loose were whipped up
and the storm that had long threatened now burst upon the
'Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission' in open fury. From the
spring of 1954 until the autumn of that year the press
thundered against it, and a hail of manifestoes and protests
descended upon the 'Fishcake Palace'.
The immediate cause of this outburst was a gesture on the
part of the Americans which was in reality both kindly and
well meant, but which was described by the American
anthropologist and sociologist Herbert Passin, then resident
in Tokyo, as *the worst mistake of all'. What actually happened? Dr John S. Morton, Director of the ABCC, offered
to take in the twenty-three unfortunate atomic victims from
the Lucky Dragon and to give them treatment in the clinic on
Hijiyama Hill overlooking Hiroshima. 'Such an offer,' Passin
had said, 'could only be made by a man who totally misunderstood the feelings of the Japanese. For years the American
Government had been using all its resources in the field of
public relations to tell the Japanese that the ABCC had not
been set up in order to cure people, that it had no facilities
for giving treatment, and that this was how it had to be. The
argument was that the long-term results of objective scientific
research would in the end be as advantageous to the Japanese
people as simple medical treatment, and probably more so.
Nevertheless, the Japanese had never quite got over their
suspicions that they were being used as guinea-pigs by the
ABCC. Therefore one of two conclusions must be drawn
from the ABCC's offer: either the Commission's previous
statements that it was incapable of giving medical treatment
were a He; or else the Americans wished to make use of this
latest catastrophe for their own research purposes. Neither of
these conclusions was flattering for us. When Dr Morton of
the ABCC visited the University Hospital in Tokyo, it did not
occur to the Japanese that he might have done so in order
to express his regrets or to offer his help. On the contrary,
it was assumed that his motive was to study some of the
symptoms resultant upon exposure to H-bomb radioactivity.
Dozens of articles appeared in the press, all with the theme:
"We won't be treated like guinea-pigs."
The directing staff of the ABCC has admitted that as a
result of this press campaign more and more of those invited to
Hijiyama Hill for examination were now refusing to come.
This threatened the statistical validity of the results
obtained. Something had to be done urgently to counteract
the 'attrition of patient-material' which had by then reached
thirty-nine per cent. Such was the phraseology used by the
author of the ABCC's semi-annual report; it is not purely
accidental that his language should have resembled that used
by staff officers writing a military dispatch.
As early as 1952 Y. Scott Matsumoto, the head of the
'contactors', had written a critical study of the difficulties and
misunderstandings that faced the ABCC in its dealings with
the patients and the public generally. This he had entitled
Patient Rapport in a Foreign Country, and it was so outspoken
that eventually only a bowdlerized and abbreviated version
was allowed to be published.
The work of this American sociologist of Japanese origin is
of general interest principally because it shows in exact
detail the frictions that must be created when a modern
Western organization attempts to function within the framework of a foreign, ancient culture and fails to take into
account the external and internal conditions inspired by
that culture. The reproach is frequently levelled at Albert
Schweitzer that he has deliberately kept his jungle clinic in a
primitive state: it is said that he has refused to equip it with
all the most modern medical and technical devices out of a
sort of'stubbornness'. The experience of the ABCC, with all
its ultra-modern equipment, shows that Schweitzer is correct
when he maintains that those who would bring help to others
must, by behaviour, approach those whom they would help.
According to Dr Matsumoto the new ABCC Clinic was
regarded by the Japanese as being altogether too magnificent
and elegant. Many women did not dare go there without
having first visited a beauty parlour and got out their very
best clothes. Poor people such as casual labourers borrowed
clothes from their neighbours in order to make a 'decent'
appearance.
When the patients first came into the entrance hall, which
was entirely occidental in style, they showed evidence of
'confusion and discomfort'. Many immediately began to skid in
their wooden sandals upon the smooth and polished floor. In
the waiting-room American magazines were laid out for
their entertainment, and in most cases they could not so
much as read the print. Similarly the signs on all the doors
were in English, so that the patients were frequently incapable
of finding their way to the room they had been told to go.
The receptionists were almost exclusively Niseis (Americans
of Japanese extraction), whose behaviour, according to Dr
Matsumoto, was in some cases 'unnecessarily abrupt, rude
or curt'. According to the sociologist "the drivers who fetched
the patients and drove them home again were more concerned with looking after their cars than worried about the
well-being of their passengers.'
The Japanese are accustomed to being examined by a
single doctor. It therefore seemed to them strange and even
shocking that after having undressed and put on an unusual
garment without a back they should be treated as 'something
on a factory belt' and passed from one specialist to the next;
these would take specimens of their blood, semen, bone
marrow, skin tissue; they would be thumped, have lights
shone in their eyes, be photographed, and pumped full of
serum; and none of these specialists ever explained why or
with what purpose all this was being done for them. In order to
examine and compare the condition of children exposed to
radiation, they would be examined in the nude, a procedure
to which the young girls often objected, principally because
the tactful handling promised in such cases was not always
observed as it should have been.
In a word, the lack of skill and the tactlessness manifested
by the ABCC derived from a defective imagination and an
inability to anticipate the emotions of others. This in its turn
led to rumours, and finally the Hiroshima clinic won the
unenviable reputation of being a sort of modern torture
chamber.
Dr Matsumoto's 'interviewers' collected all these rumours
and did their best to scotch them as and when they arose.
One result of their labours was that examinations now
frequently ended with a so-called 'exit interview', at which
the patient was asked in private by a single individual 'what
impressions his experience with the Commission had made
on him'. From these interviews it transpired that the two
procedures which the American doctors had thought must
arouse the greatest resentment - the extraction of the bone
marrow and the collection of semen specimens - did not in
fact shock the persons being used as research material at all.
One of the major complaints noted by Scott Matsumoto
was that patients repeatedly examined over a period of a year
were not given a prompt diagnosis of their case at an early
stage, and often only received such a diagnosis after a long
delay. In his own words: 'Many patients reported that two or
three months after being examined they received letters in
which was written: "You are in excellent physical condition,"
and that these letters arrived when they were actually ill in
bed. One said that he had received such an examination
report on his mother one week after her death.'
Even before the public crisis of the spring of 1954 the
ABCC, on the basis of the Matsumoto Report, was already
attempting to dispel the misunderstanding of some of the
patients. The floors were no longer waxed till they were
dangerously slippery; the staff were ordered to be cheerful
and polite at all times, with the result that their manners did
improve somewhat. There were now Japanese periodicals as
well in the waiting-room, and the inscriptions on the doors
were in two languages. And those patients who could afford a
private doctor now also knew that he would be given a
complete and full report of the results revealed by the ABCC
examination.
All these changes and improvements had, however, failed to
dispel the atmosphere of distrust which, growing ever
worse, now quite enveloped the clinic in the minds of the
people of Hiroshima. An autobiographical novel with the tide
The Devil's Seed is proof of this. It deals almost exclusively
with the effects of the ABCC and it was intensively discussed
throughout Japan. The author, himself a Hiroshima man
with the name of Hiroyuki Agawa, described the experiences
of a newspaperman who visits his native city Hiroshima eight
years after the Pikadon with the purpose of collecting material
for a series of newspaper articles. There he experiences the
havoc that the 'atom death* works, in his own family: a little
nephew must suddenly take to his bed because he does not
feel quite well. Soon his pains are diagnosed as being caused
by leukaemia, the result of radiation; the child slowly grows
sicker, dies and is the object of an autopsy. Of all the
accusations levelled against the ABCC in this novel none is
perhaps more monstrous than the allegation that the Americans were quite uninterested in treating and curing the sick
because only by letting the illness run its course could they
examine the full progress of the malady, undisturbed.
There is another accusation that Agawa makes against the
ABCC, and one that has been constantly repeated ever since.
He says that though they allege that the results of their
research are available for public examination, in fact their
most important scientific discoveries are kept secret and that
this is done so that in the event of an atomic war the United
States would be defensively in a stronger position than the
enemy.
The Japanese author was not able to produce conclusive
proof of the allegations made in his novel. Nevertheless,
general credence was given to what he had to say. The
stubbornness with which, despite all criticism, the Americans
I continued to refuse medical treatment to the survivors of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki repeatedly and inevitably led to
these and similar attacks being levelled at the ABCC. Did
they fear that by treating and curing the victims they would
reveal a secret therapy now known only to themselves, which
they therefore regarded as a 'secret weapon' in the event of
another atomic war?
The arguments with which the ABCC sought to defend
itself when attacked for its refusal to treat the atomic sick
were of too formal a nature to convince. Dr Matsumoto, for
example, had recommended that this principal cause of
resentment should be answered as follows: 'The physicians
on the Commission's professional staff have no local licence
whereby they may practise in Japan. The treatment of patients
is the prerogative and work of the Hiroshima physician, a
sphere into which the Commission feels it should not intrude
or compete.'
This statement immediately provided the basis for further
questions. In the first place the Americans had requested
and obtained from the Japanese Government an unusual
permission to examine Japanese nationals. Had they at the
same time seriously requested permission to treat those who
were sick? If they had done so, surely such an authorization
would not have been withheld? In the second place the
Americans had spent billions of yen on having their military
weapons and equipment repaired by Japanese technicians
and workmen during the Korean War. Why could they not
produce a fraction of this sum for the 'repair' of the victims
of the atom bombs by Japanese doctors - if a cure was in fact
feasible at all? Why did they not set up a hospital for the
atomic sick, to be staffed by Japanese nationals? Why did
they not create a special insurance fund to cover the cost of
treatment for the survivors?
No convincing reply was ever given to these last reproaches.
However, in that part of his report which was not allowed to
be published Dr Matsumoto does at least indicate one of the
real reasons behind the American Commission's stubborn
refusal to give medical treatment to the atomic victims.
For in the Matsumoto Report it is more than once explicitly
stated: 'No air of atonement is to be suggested in any way by
the Commission.' The observance of this basic attitude was
so strict that, according to Matsumoto, the original plan
whereby 'atomic victims' were to be taken on the payroll as
'contactors' - with the job of getting in contact with those
sick persons whom the clinic's doctors wished to examine was dropped because even so minute an action of recompense
on the part of the ABCC might have added an air of
atonement to the ABCC project.
American official policy, from the very beginning up to the
present day, has been adamant on one point: any special
treatment for the atom-bombed cities and any right to special
treatment for persons damaged by the atom bombs have
been absolutely denied. For they have feared that even this
would be interpreted as admitting the special nature of the
atomic bomb. And this would inevitably pose a question of
principle. In some respects the radio-active rays disseminated
by the bomb could be practically equated with the effects of
poison gas. Therefore, was the employment of a weapon
which emitted such rays in accordance with the principles of
international law, or did this not rather constitute a war
crime? Here surely lies the more profound reason for the
fact that certain American authorities have shown a constant
and obvious tendency to minimize and understate the longterm effects of atom bombing: they have closed their eyes to
them, in the hope that other people would then not see the
brand mark of their guilt.
However, certain members of the ABCC either would not
or could not obey their instructions whereby, in conversation
with the survivors of the Pikadon, they were supposed to
show no traces of pity, regret or readiness to accept guilt I
was assured in Hiroshima that there were, in fact, certain ;
American doctors who secretly visited their patients in their
homes in order to help them; others went out of their way (
to display their feelings of friendliness towards the native
inhabitants of the city.
For example, the anatomist, Dr R., took pleasure in
entertaining Japanese guests in his living quarters up on
''The Hill'. When his chief, Dr Holmes forbade this - on the
grounds that racial segregation was ordered even in the
clinic's cafeteria - Dr R. thenceforth spent almost all his free
time in the homes of his Japanese friends, took to wearing
Japanese clothing whenever he was off duty, and finally even
became a Buddhist. Dr M. - without informing the then
Director of the ABCC Clinic - married a Japanese girl, but
was subjected to so many petty annoyances as a result that he
finally had to leave Hiroshima.
Dr Earle Reynolds was one of the anthropologists
employed by the ABCC in Hiroshima. He spent years
examining children suffering from atomic damage. He was so
deeply moved by this experience that he later attempted to sail a
'protest ship' into the atomic-bomb testing zone. -..
Particularly impressive was the case of the American staff
doctor, Dr H., a specialist in internal maladies. After his first ;
examination of people suffering from the atomic sickness, he
could not restrain himself from saying to his colleagues in
the cafeteria: 'It's really abominable what we did here!' He
was sent for by Dr Robert Holmes, a former army doctor
who was at that time head of the ABCC Clinic, and was not
only sharply reprimanded for having given utterance to his
emotions in this way, but also henceforth forbidden all
contact with the atomic victims. The alleged reason for this
was that his 'emotional outburst' offered enough evidence to
justify a supposition that he was not sufficiently 'emotionally
unable' for such work, and that he must therefore immediately
undergo psychiatric treatment in the neighbouring town of
Kure.
The doctor who was being disciplined in this fashion
decided, however, to put up a fight and insisted on his
democratic rights as a citizen. He would not simply accept the
Director's verdict. Through the National Research Council in
Washington he began a campaign to ensure his reinstatement
in the normal activity of the clinic. After fighting a paper-war
for one whole year, he finally won his rights. Dr H. was thus
enabled to carry out some interesting research work in
Hiroshima, particularly in the cardiological field, without
being compelled to leave his right to human feelings on the
steps outside the clinic each time he entered its doors.
But the pressure of public opinion was becoming too
strong even for the Director of the ABCC. In his semiannual report for the second half of 1954 even he finally felt
compelled to advise the authorities in Washington for whom
he worked that the ABCC should at long last be authorized
to treat its patients. It is worth noting what were the
arguments that he now advanced in favour of such a reform.
The text runs as follows: 'With an increased effort to study
more patients more thoroughly, and judiciously offer them
more therapy, there should be a marked increase in the
rapport between the families and the ABCC. Then in the
eventuality of some patients* death, it would be possible to
have more worthwhile autopsies.'25
Thus, in the forefront of this proposal - which was
presented to the public as a humanitarian measure - we see
once again that die motive was not one of curing the sick,
but was a hope that better oiled 'human relations' would lead to
the obtaining of more productive 'research material'.
Furthermore, even these arguments, free though they were
of any trace of human feeling, did not suffice to produce the
hoped-for special credits needed if therapy were to be done.
The clinic was simply authorized to maintain the 'diagnostic
ward' with ten beds which had been first set up in 1953,
even though protests had then been lodged that the principle
of non-treatment was being broken. But only particularly
'interesting cases' were taken into this 'diagnostic ward'.
Attempted treatments or successful cures in this tiny ward
25
Page 9, Semi-Annual Report, ABCC Headquarters, Hiroshima, Japan, 1
July thru 3 December 1954. For official use only.
were never referred to in the semi-annual reports; on the
other hand, in a single brief reference to this ward, the text
of the semi-annual report previously quoted contains the
following passage: 'A considerable number of patients admitted
to the diagnostic ward were found to have diseases which
sooner or later would prove fatal. The diagnostic ward
and the opportunities it presents furnish yet another most
necessary part of ABCC's programme, viz., the possibility of
furnishing the Department of Pathology with carefully and
well-studied clinical material. This is most necessary to
Pathology, and certainly not less so for the Department of
Internal Medicine. Unfortunately, the number of cases
coming to autopsy at ABCC which previously had been
studied at ABCC - even as out-patients - is less than half a
dozen during the corresponding number of months,'
Kikkawa, one of the founders of The Association of Atomic
Victims has therefore maintained that it was principally only
hopeless cases that were selected for the little diagnostic
ward. This ward could then be quite correctly described as a
'corpse-production factory'.
I have already referred to Herbert Passin's analysis of the
American-Japanese misunderstanding that followed the Lucky
Dragon accident.26 He describes the difference of attitude of
the two nations in their reactions to the problems created by
nuclear weapons, and he characterizes these as follows:
'Neither of the two parties was capable either of understanding or of acknowledging the sincerity of the other.
Whatever the Americans said sounded like an insult to the
Japanese, for their arguments were invariably of a purely
technical and rational nature, while emotion and anxiety
appeared to be ruled out as irrelevant.' Referring to the
mistakes the Americans had made in their dealings with the
26
'Japan and the H-Bomb', in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
Chicago. October 1955.
C.O.A.—15
Japanese, he therefore warns his own countrymen against
reliance on exclusively technical and rational arguments when
dealing with other nations.
As a positive counter-force to an official policy which won
for the Americans in Japan a reputation for 'coldness and
inhumanity' he quoted a number of Svarm, personal gestures'
such as the invitation of the so-called 'Atomic Maidens' of
Hiroshima who were given a free trip through the United
States, It is only when viewed against the background portrayed above - the cold-hearted attitude of the American
atomic victims commission known as the ABCC - that one
can see why this private action created so deep and surprising
an impression in Japan.
This idea - like the idea of some years before that
Americans should 'spiritually adopt atomic orphans' - had
originated with the inexhaustible Norman Cousins. Despite
the greatest financial and bureaucratic difficulties, he succeeded at last in realizing this new project.
In view of all that had happened the Japanese had become
extremely distrustful. When Cousins arrived at Hiroshima in
the spring of 1955 to make the final arrangements for the
voyage of the twenty-five girls who had suffered from the
atomic bomb, almost everybody assumed that his motive was
solely one of self-interest. The Japanese journalists were
determined to find out what lay behind it all. Whose money
was it? Was it true that it was all being secretly financed by
the United States Government, as was said, in order to
counteract the bad impression made by the Lucky Dragon
affair? How about the story that the girls were to be used in a
sort of travelling freak-show, moving back and forth across
the United States and on show against the purchase of an
expensive ticket? After all that had happened it seemed highly
unlikely to the Japanese that the citizens of America could
feel any emotion such as pity, or even fellow-feeling, for the
victims of the atomic bomb.
It was in 1953, in the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto's
church, that Norman Cousins had first met some of these
girls, disfigured by exceptionally large burn-scars. Because
of their deformed appearance they no longer dared mix
with their fellow-creatures in the normal way. Cousins had
wondered at the time if plastic surgery might not help them.
Back in the United States, he succeeded in obtaining
the support of numerous clergymen, doctors and private
individuals for his plan.
By collecting money, obtaining sponsors, and the promise
of free hospitalization by persuading the surgeons who would
operate to waive their fees and relevant expenses, the material
bases for the journey were at last established.
He failed, however, in his attempts to make a similar
arrangement with the airplane companies that would fly the
girls and their companions from Japan and across the United
States. It was now that the only 'government agency' to be
involved in the business offered its services: the United
States Air Force General J. E. Hull, of the Far East
Command, offered a long-range transport to take the girls to
New York. This particular arrangement was soon to prove its
importance - and in a way that nobody had foreseen. For
scarcely had the Skymaster C-54 left Japan with the 'Atomic
Maidens' on board, than a radio message arrived signed by
Walter Robinson, the head of the Far Eastern Desk in
the State Department, ordering that the whole journey be
cancelled forthwith. It can be safely assumed that the attention
of this senior civil servant had only been drawn to the project
at this late hour, and that he was now trying to cancel it at the
very last moment.
For a while it looked as though all the labours of the past
two years would be rendered null and void by the stroke of a
bureaucrat's pen. However, the pilot of the plane had seen,
before they took off, how filled with hope and joy were the
girls whose faces the bomb had clawed and disfigured. He
did not hesitate for long. He radioed back that he could only
accept orders from his military superior, General MacNaughton. Until he received a countermanding order from the
General, therefore, he would continue to fly the arranged
course, with destination the United States. The order to turn
about did not come, though these were anxious hours for the
few persons on board who were aware of what was going on.
For 'normal channels* between the State Department and
the commanders of the United States Air Force are fortunately longer and slower than the flight from Japan to
Mitchell Field, New York, And to send the girls back without
explanation after they had received their first, unusually
friendly welcome to America - that was something even the
stoniest-hearted politician dared not risk.
The attempt to do something for the 'Atomic Maidens'
aroused, to begin with, less popular enthusiasm in Hiroshima
than anywhere else. Pastor Tanimoto had played the chief
part in deciding which girls should have the good luck to
visit the Unites States. This outstanding man, who appears
as one of the principal personalities in John Hersey's report
called Hiroshima, was admired throughout all the world by
the millions who had read that book; yet in his own hometown, in Hiroshima itself, he had made himself noticeably
unpopular. It may be, as some said, that his fame had really
gone to his head a bit, and that he had never learned when
to open his mouth and when to keep it closed. Yet this was
not enough to explain the many reproaches levelled at him
by his fellow-citizens. The real answer is that he had become
an object of envy.
And now, once again, Tanimoto became the target for
countless unproved and unprovable slanders. It was said that
he only thought up this visit of the girls to America hi order
to win publicity for himself. Would it not have been both
cheaper and better to operate on the cheloids here in Japan,
instead of organizing this sensational flight across the Pacific? It
was also said that Tanimoto had only selected girls
belonging to his own church, and that the Americans for
their part had insisted that only such girls be sent as were
not too hideously scarred, for they simply dared not show
their compatriots the grimace of atomic war in all its full
horror.
Yet such petty criticism was silenced by the press reports
which had begun to arrive from the United States. These
spoke of the extremely cordial reception that was being given
the twenty-five 'young ladies from Hiroshima'. Also the
letters that the girls themselves wrote home were so obviously
enthusiastic that bit by bit the sneers and slanders died away.
On the other hand a question that had been debated ever
since the accident to the crew of the Lucky Dragon came
more and more to the fore in Japan, and was discussed with
ever greater heat. This question was: 'What exactly arc we
Japanese doing for the survivors of the atom bomb?' And the
answer, as provided by newspapermen visiting Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, became less and less ambiguous: 'To all
intents and purposes, nothing whatsoever.' And so now, at
long last, the Japanese began to think less about the 'coldhearted Americans' and more about their own failure to do
anything to ameliorate die suffering of the hibakusha.
For example, it now became generally known for the first
time that the professors and students of the Hiroshima
Medical Postgraduate School had long ago offered to treat
the atomic victims for nothing, but that their offer had then
been turned down as the result of an intrigue organized by a
few influential doctors in private practice. Had not perhaps
those same doctors continued their intrigue in Tokyo and
arranged that the Japanese Ministry of Health refuse permission to the Americans - should they ask it - that they be
allowed to give medical treatment to the victims of atomic
radiation? Nor could it remain hidden any longer that Mayor
Hamai, in his attempts to secure further help for Hiroshima
from the Japanese State, had failed principally because the
Government party had insisted that the much-loved Mayor
of Hiroshima must first join their political organization.
Hamai had felt compelled to regard such 'horse-trading' as a
betrayal of his electors, for he had twice been voted into
office as an 'Independent'.
After his futile visit to Tokyo in an attempt to raise funds
for his city in 1953, he had tried to arrange a bank loan for
Hiroshima in the United States. This, however, was as
unsuccessful as were the efforts of the well-known public
relations firm, Harold Gram, to organize collections for
Hiroshima on a national scale.
Oram had had to inform Mayor Hamai in June 1954 that
unfortunately, and against all his expectations, he had not
succeeded in founding a Hiroshima Supporting Society, as
planned. The reason was that the 'influential and exceptional
personalities' whom he had hoped would give their names as
sponsors of this society had regretfully declined. (One of
these was Dr Milton Eisenhower, the President's brother.)
He blamed this on 'the new international situation and a
noticeable change of attitude on the part of prominent
personalities'.
It was principally owing to his failure to secure credits that
Hamai's political career was now interrupted. It was said of
the Mayor that he had no influential friends who could help
Hiroshima. The result was this: when the man who more
than any other individual was responsible for Hiroshima's
reconstruction ran for office for the third time, he was
defeated at the polls.
Yet now at last, after ten long years, Japanese public
opinion began to demand that something be done for the
victims of the Pikadon. Special surcharge postage stamps
were put on sale for the new year throughout all Japan.
These brought in billions of yen immediately, enough to
finance the building of a special hospital in Hiroshima for the
treatment of patients suffering from the radiation sickness. In
the Japanese Diet efforts began to be made to introduce a
bill whereby the atomic sick would receive free medical
treatment for the rest of their lives. Thus, after all, the action
inaugurated in 1951 by a handful of determined individuals
in the martyred city of Hiroshima to help the survivors of the
atom bomb was now at last understood and carried forward
by die weight of opinion of all the people.
TWO AGAINST DISASTER
1
It had actually been Kawamoto's intention to marry shortly
after Tokie had accepted him. With the severance pay that
Ichiro had received when he ceased to be employed by the
Saka Electricity Works he bought a few sticks of cheap
furniture and found a place to live in a house in the railway
quarter.
A little later, at Christmas time, their friend and brotherin-baptism, Fujita, also became engaged to be married. It
was he who had first taken Ichiro to the language class, six
long years ago, where he had got to know Tokie. They
thought of arranging a double wedding. Fujita's marriage
took place, but Tokie and Ichiro were only there as guests.
'Unfortunately we must wait a little longer,' Kawamoto
explained. 'My severance pay hasn't been enough to buy
everything we need. We don't even possess any decent
bedding. I'm a day-labourer now, and Tokie has to look after
her mother.'
But to a few close friends he was more explicit:
'Our relationship is not a normal one. We've come
together because we want to work together, to fill the gap
where our society has failed, to help other people.' And as if
by way of further explanation, he added, blushing slighdy:
'When I've spent the whole day looking after the sick and the
needy, by the time I get home I simply am not able to
embrace Tokie-chan. At such moments I cannot get rid of
the thought: what right have we to enjoy domestic happiness?'
Yet even this explanation did not give the whole truth.
Many years ago Ichiro, when talking to the orphans of
'Sunflower Castle', had said that he intended never to marry,
for he was afraid of bringing children into the world who
would be incapable of living a normal life. That is to say, he
shared the most profound anxiety that afflicted all the youthful
survivors of the atomic catastrophe: the fear that their
progeny would show traces of atomic damage, would be
morons or monsters.
Since 'that day' dozens of midwives' tales had circulated
throughout Hiroshima, stories about miscarriages and misbirths of grotesquely malproportioned babies, many of which
were scarcely recognizable as human beings at all. Many of
these abnormal children were allegedly disposed of quietly
by the midwives or by their mothers; the few who remained
alive were put into institutions.
There was an age-old story current in Japan that certain
persons were, through their heredity, 'possessed by foxes',
and that such people must abstain from marriage when they
reached the suitable age. Thus this modern version of an
ancient superstition was easily believed and spread quickly.
In fact the 'midwives' fairy tales' that circulated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki did contain an element of truth. It was
correct that one in every five or six of the pregnant women
who had lived through the Pikadon in either of the two
Japanese cities did produce offspring which had been
mutated by radio-activity. In 1945 and 1946 there was an
exceptionally high number of misbirths. Some children were
not only born with unusually small heads, but also showed
signs of mutation in their rate of growth and of development. It
was even found necessary to open a special home for
mentally retarded atomic orphans, which was called the
Roppo Gakufn. Finally, it is true that in 1945 and 1946
statistics show that Hiroshima had a rate of miscarriages
higher than the average for all Japan.
Yet none of this applied to children who were only
conceived after the disaster, even when one or both their
parents were themselves atomic victims. There was hardly
any other field of study to which the ABCC devoted greater
attention than to this: what, if any, hereditary effects were
traceable to radio-active exposure? Laboratory research on
fruit-flies, mice and rats had shown that hereditary damage
to these creatures' offspring and descendants was considerable owing to the mutations effected within the genes: it was
now a matter of supreme interest to discover whether a
similar process were detectable in human beings. The results
were - at least so far as the first generation went - negative.
However, by the time these good tidings were handed down
from Hijiyama Hill, the people of Japan had long decided
that the ABCC did not publish the whole truth. The reassuring
news was therefore not believed at all in Hiroshima,27
Even if these pronouncements by the ABCC were not a
deliberate attempt to conceal the truth, the question still
remained open whether hereditary damage caused by radioactivity might not yet make its appearance in subsequent
generations. In any event that was what Kawamoto feared,
and shortly after his engagement he explained to his fiancee
why, in his opinion, they ought not to get married. Originally
his emotions had overwhelmed him, but now he had been
able to think over quietly where his duties and responsibility
lay; he was therefore prepared to give Tokie back her
freedom.
But when Kawamoto pressed her in this fashion to break
off her engagement, Tokie told him a secret which the
Uematsu family had until now kept hidden from all the
world: 'A few months after "that day" my older sister gave
birth to just such a . . . child. Ever since then I've been
frightened, exactly as you have been. Maybe we shouldn't
really get married. But can we not at least remain together?'
So they remained together. They had originally hoped to
pass the New Year holiday on their honeymoon. Instead they
'acted as replacements in the Shudoin Orphanage, so that
the good sisters might at least enjoy one holiday a year,'
27
Referring to this research work and to the optimistic conclusions that
have so frequently been drawn therefrom, H. J. Muller, the 'father of
modern genetics', has said: 'I think that it is very unfortunate to cite lack of
results from one study, as indicating that there is no effect, .. We need not
feel at all secure or relieved that no effects were found.' Page 1084, The
Nature of radioactive fallout and its effect on Man, Congressional Hearings, 47 June 195?, Washington DC.
Then back to normal life. Tokie had once again to work in a
Pachinko saloon. Ichiro, however, had become a proper
Nikoyon,2* and he spent his days shovelling earth, building
the new road that was to run over the Tenjinyama Hill.
They told some people, including Tokie's employers, that
they were brother and sister; they did not correct others who
assumed that they had got married quietly a long time ago.
But they could not pretend to Mary Macmillan, the American missionary who was their close friend. And it was for
her sake that they once again changed their minds and
decided to get married after all.
Early in February, that is to say just one month before the
date that they had fixed for their wedding, a Mr Kamikuri,
the Director of the Shinsei Orphanage, came to see Ichiro
Kawamoto. He had a question he wished to ask him, and it
was this: would Kawamoto and Tokie take an atomic orphan
into their home? The boy in question was at present still
in jail, serving a sentence for theft, but he would be discharged at once provided a family could be found willing to
look after him.
While Ichiro and Tokie had made up their minds that it
would be wrong for them to produce children of their own,
they had decided that they would look after young strangers
who had no homes instead. Here was the first opportunity to
put this plan into practice. But at this particular time, that is
to say just before their marriage, Kamikuri's proposal was
extremely inconvenient. Would they not now have to devote
the savings they had so painfully collected to buying food for
their guest? When he noticed Ichiro's hesitancy, the orphanage
director explained at once that the ward in question was
nineteen years old, and that he would work on the roadbuilding along with Ichiro. He would thus earn some money
and be able to contribute to the household expenses.
28
The word Nikoyon, which describes those unemployed men and
women who are found work by the Unemployment Officer, first came into
use in 1951. The daily pay of 240 yen (or approximately 6s. 3d. or 50 cents)
per day is exceptionally low, even by Japanese standards. M means two, yon
four. Anodier word for these day-labourers is anko, a fish widi a big belly
which lies motionless, its mouth open, waiting for its prey to swim into its
jaws.
'When I told Tokie about it,' Kawamoto has said, 'she did
not take it as a particularly pleasant surprise. But at last she
agreed, and said: "Very well then, I'll cook for you."
'I went to see Mr Kamikuri with the purpose of meeting
young Mr So-and-so, whom I'll call A. He looked intelligent. I
hadn't expected that. It was marvellous to see the happy
expression on Director Kamikuri's face as he gave A. the new
suit he'd bought for him. After spending two or three more days
in the orphanage, A. came to us. It was difficult for Tokie to
make our home as pleasant a place to live in as it used to be,
because A. was rather conceited and did nothing but talk about
himself. He would tell us over and over again about ,his life in
prison. "One thing's for sure, Kawamoto Niisan (elder brother)
hasn't seen as much of the world as I have." He was forever
repeating this, and really the way he talked to me was more as
if he was the elder of us two.
'One day Tokie-chan asked me: "Have you any idea what's
happened to that piece of black silk?"
'She almost whispered as she said this, though A. was out at
the time.
'"No idea at all. What are you talking about?"
*"I can't find the piece of material. A customer brought it to
me only yesterday."
'"Have you really looked everywhere?"
' "Absolutely everywhere. Even in the trunk."
' "Maybe you left it at your mother's house?"
' "I'm certain I didn't."
'The room I had rented for us was only nine feet by six. It
contained one small cupboard. Was it possible that A.... ?
No, that was certainly not the explanation. Tokie had had
the same thought. She was deeply upset, and finally she lost
patience: "I don't know what to say. I don't even know what
I'm trying to do. And I've had enough of acting as cook for
you two. I'm giving notice here and now. I'm going back
home."'
Later Tokie explained why she had run away from Ichiro
at that time:
'I simply couldn't bear to see how Kawamoto kept on
trying to excuse that ex-jailbird. Certainly his generosity
touched me. But I was forced to say to myself that such
goodness of heart was simply too much for me.'
When A. came home Kawamoto tried to question him.
But no sooner had he asked him cautiously whether he had
any idea where the piece of black silk might have vanished to
than the other shouted in Hiroshima dialect and using prison
slang: 'What are you getting at? You think I swiped it?'
Next day Kawamoto gave some pretext for not going to
work and instead turned the entire room upside down. At
last he found the piece of stuff in an old box which had
seldom been opened in years. This box was his sole inheritance from his mother. Here too he kept the many hundreds
of letters that Tokie had written him.
Ichiro took the box and immediately ran with it to his
wife's parents' house. There was still an expression of anger
on his face as he pushed open the rickety front door and
shouted in a rough voice that no one had ever heard before:
'Hullo! Where's Toki-chan?'
The mother, sister and the sister's friend, a certain Mr
Sigiura, came running out. Kawamoto did not even see
them, and pushed open the next door. In the middle of the
room sat Tokie, white as a sheet. She was sewing and she
did not look up.
He dumped the box on the floor, ripped open the lid, and
said in a voice almost incoherent with rage:
'There you are! Just look inside that and just look at what
you've done, simply because you couldn't search for anything
properly. You've deeply offended A. You've thrown him off
the rails, just when he was beginning to live a proper, decent
life again. Do you remember what we'd planned to do, you
and I? We wanted to do small acts of kindness, quietly, to
help our fellow-men. And you've left them in the lurch and
me too.'
'Please, please!' The mother and Mr Sigiura were now
trying to intervene. 'Anybody can make a mistake. You must
forgive her.'
Kawamoto would not be calmed down. Nowadays when
he recalls this scene, it is always the water pot that first
comes to his mind:
'This pot, filled almost to the brim with water, was
standing on the kitchen hearth. I took the bundles of letters
from Tokie out of the box. They were tied up with lengths of
string, arranged according to their dates. I broke the string
and then began to tear up the letters, one by one. I threw all
the scraps of paper on the fire, under the water pot. Only
then did I begin to realize for the first time how very many
letters Tokie had written me. She stood beside me, as if she
had been beaten, and could not bring herself to utter a single
word: "No, I want to forget her absolutely," I shouted. "Not a
single one of these letters will be kept ..." And after
twenty minutes it was done. The water in the pot had begun to
boil furiously. "There - and now, good-bye!" I walked out of
the house with the empty box in my hand. Behind me I
could hear the pot bubbling away . ..'
When Kawamoto got back to his room he heard a loud
quarrel going on upstairs, on the second floor. A childless
married couple lived up there. They were complaining to the
landlord that while they were out somebody had broken into
their room, which they kept locked. Nothing of this sort had
ever happened in this house before the arrival of A.
Thus Kawamoto too began to have doubts about his guest.
And when Tokie came to see him a few days later, to ask for
his forgiveness, he gave it to her at once.
But it was not until several weeks later, when Ichiro and
Tokie had already moved out and had given A. their room
that their suspicions were to be proved justified beyond the
shadow of a doubt. Someone had visited the different people
for whom Kawamoto was in the habit of doing his 'little
kindnesses' and had begged for money and food, on the
pretext that these were needed for 'poor Kawamoto, who
had suddenly fallen sick'. In every case the description tallied
exactly with A.
What is more, he had made a good haul, for each one of
the people he approached was delighted with this opportunity
to show, as best he could, his feelings of gratitude to the
helper Ichiro.
On the day that Tokie and Ichiro moved into their new
home with the Yamagata family, Mary Macmillan sailed for
America. As a farewell present and memento they had got
her a long rice spoon, which they took in a parcel to the
station for her. Only as the train was pulling out of the
station did it occur to them that they had planned to marry
without fail before their friend's departure. And once again it
had come to nothing. Sadly they made their way back to
their new home.
Notwithstanding the way their guest had let them down,
Ichiro and Tokie continued to offer the hospitality of their
little home in the Sendamachi district to other young people.
They shared all their possessions with them; indeed they
even gave their guests the room with the straw mats, while
they themselves slept on the bare and draughty floor in the
kitchen. They finally had so many people staying with them
that Ichiro had to nail a large letter-box to his front door,
with the names of the inhabitants of his little flat written on it.
Many of their 'children* gave them much delight. There
was, for example, C. with his hilarious talent for mimicry his masterpiece was to imitate a female samisen player (a
Japanese guitar). Then there was little Miss Yamada, who
was so happy that her brother Goro, who had been hard of
hearing ever since the Pikadon had at last been able to leave
the orphanage and become a member of this somewhat
unusual 'family'. Goro himself, however, was convinced that
he had drawn a dud in choosing those particular fosterparents. 'Give me rice!' he would growl twice a day when the
dish of porridge was set before him for his midday and his
evening meal. 'We got this filthy muck in the institute too.
It's about time I got a proper "silver dish" (Japanese
expression for rice) to eat!'
It was not only in the narrow circle of his wards that Ichiro
was subject to repeated disappointments. In his work for the
Anti-Atom Bomb Movement he was confronted only by
intrigues, jealousy, conceit and ingratitude. It often seemed
an almost hopeless undertaking to attempt to mediate
between the many different groups of 'atomic victims'. For
the friends of peace fought one another with a positively
bellicose ferocity.
He was sometimes afflicted with profound doubts nowadays: were not all their protests against the testing of atomic
weapons a pure waste of time? Had the collections of
signatures against such testing and the demonstrations
against Japanese remilitarization any purpose whatsoever?
Would the Governments concerned be in any way impressed
by such actions? In the years from 1954 to 1956 it certainly
did not seem likely that they would.
All the same - had not the atomic victims been saying
among themselves for years that they would not have any
hope of obtaining support from the State?
Yet now, in Hiroshima, the foundation stone had been laid
for a new hospital to care for the atomic sick. (Incidentally,
not a single hibakusha had been invited to attend this ceremony.) And now it was said that next year the Japanese Diet in
Tokyo would pass a law whereby those suffering from
radiation sickness would be given free medical treatment. So
there was, after all, some purpose in righting for a just cause!
Eventually the day must dawn when even the deaf would
open their ears to the truth. Provided that those who knew
what the truth was did not grow discouraged and fall silent!
When Ichiro, alone or with Tokie's help, sat up late at
night writing letters or painting slogans on banners; when he
attended yet another of the congresses that now took place
more and more frequently in Hiroshima, and listened yet
again to the endless speeches: when he marched in demonstration after demonstration and spoke until he was close to
physical collapse about the new disaster that threatened them
all, to an audience consisting of children and old people, of
women, casual labourers and beggars: on such occasions he
often found new strength to withstand his exhaustion by
glancing at his little Dharma doll. These are small figures of a
man, lacquered red, on a rounded base which, when
knocked over, immediately stands up again; they are to be
found in many a Japanese household. Once, in the summer of
1955 during the great collection of signatures against the
atom-bomb tests, Ichiro had called on a famous team of
Sumo wrestlers which was paying a visit to Hiroshima. He
had gone to their dressing-room to obtain their signatures. It
was then that the star of the team, the huge, good-tempered
Tochini-shiki, had given him the Dharma doll and - as was
the custom - had written his most ardent desire on the blank
space where the doll's right eye should have been. What he
had written was: 'Let there be peace at last!'
It was said of these Dharma dolls: 'Nana — korobi - ya oki? (If you are knocked down seven times, you'll get. up
eight.) 'I no longer possess my resilient little man,' Kawamoto tells me. 'Because a child once begged me to give it
him. But he has become my model and I have sworn to
myself: "Whatever they may do to us, I shall spring to my
feet again - no matter how often they knock me down ..."'
It happened nowadays over and over again that one of the
atomic victims whom Ichiro and Tokie had known well and
even cared for would, all these years after the Pikadon, die as a
result of the radiation sickness. And each time it was for
them as if a relative had died. But none of these deaths
moved them as deeply as that of Sadako Sasaki, a twelveyear-old girl whom Kawamoto had known for many years,
for her father's little barber's shop was next door to the
YMCA building, and Ichiro had therefore met the child
almost every day. A few days before she suddenly fell ill she
and Masahiro had themselves joined the YWCA and had
taken part in a bicycle ride from Tokyo to Hiroshima.
There is a Japanese belief that a sick person who, even on
his deathbed, can fold a thousand paper cranes will be out of
danger. As Sadako's leukaemia grew worse she bravely set
about this task, and soon above her hospital bed there arose a
web of strings on which the little cranes fluttered. But
when the sick girl had just made her six hundredth little
paper creation, her strength began to ebb away, and with No.
644 she was forced to give up. Her last words were: 'Please
do not cry, Mother and Father.'
This death came as a particularly violent shock to the
people of Hiroshima, because only a few days earlier another
'atomic child', a boy of fifteen named Norie Hirota, had died of
the same sickness. That grown-ups should die as a result of
the atom bomb such a long time after the end of the war was
shocking enough. But that children who at the end of the
war were only a few months or years old should now also have
to pay the war guilt of an older generation - this seemed
to everyone particularly gruesome and unjust.
After the death of his little friend, Sadako Sasaki, an
idea occurred to Kawamoto: a statue should be erected to
commemorate the children killed by the atomic bomb, and
beneath its shadow the young people should launch an
appeal to all parents throughout the world. This idea was
almost immediately greeted with approval throughout Japan.
Schoolboys and schoolgirls in the whole country contributed
something from their pocket money, and thus a large sum
was collected.
The school-teachers soon took control of this action, and
Kawamoto was pushed into the background. But he worked
on, in a subordinate capacity and without any trace of
bitterness, for the Thousand Crane Movement which he had
himself thought up; it soon outgrew its original purpose and
developed into a non-political Youth Movement for Peace.
However, as a result of this action, Ichiro and Tokie began to
be known outside the immediate circle of the 'survivors'. One
day an unusual visitor came to call on them in their
wretched dwelling, into which they had just moved, not far
from the Atom Dome.
'It was, I think, early in March or towards the end of
February 1956,' Kawamoto remembers. 'The man came to
see us unannounced. But I soon realized that he knew many
of my friends. He was about thirty-five years old, on the
short side, with big, round eyes and a swarthy complexion.
This Asagurv-shi, ("Mr Darkskin") as we called him, was
extremely polite. Indeed he made every effort to flatter us
and to show us how extremely well-disposed he was.
'Finally I asked him outright: "What is it you actually want
from us?"
'"I should like to know what this Peace Movement is
really all about!"
' "Who are you, and where do you come from?"
'He mentioned some name or other, assured us once
again that he wished to be our friend, and when he went
away he left a little package as a present for us. When we
opened this we found that it contained candy.
Tour days later he was back. This time he spoke quite
openly: Tin from the police and I've been told that you're
an active and enthusiastic member of the Peace Movement.
Would you please tell me about this?"
"'Why do you ask me? You must know a great deal about it
already."
'"No. In fact I know almost nothing at all."
' "Then why don't you attend a few of our meetings? After
all, a great many policemen were also killed by the atom
bomb."
'When he went away he once again tried to leave a box of
sweets behind. But this time we refused to accept his
present.
'From then on he often visited us. He was always friendly,
in an ingratiating son of way, spoke the Hiroshima dialect,
and was particularly interested in pamphlets or leaflets. If
ever he saw any lying about, he always took them away with
him.
'"Please give them to me!" he would say.
'"But they're publicly distributed!"
'Toki-chan and I thought that he took these pamphlets
away with him so that he might show them to his superiors
and thus prove that he really was "working" on our case. He
tried to get us to tell him the names of the men on the
"Council against the Atom and Hydrogen Bombs" and of
the leaders of the Teachers' Union; he also wanted to know
what we talked about at our discussion groups. But he didn't
get anything out of us.
'Finally he made us a proposition: our life was obviously a
very hard one, and he would like to do something for us.
How would we like a nice secure job? He could recommend
us to various of his friends. For example in the Municipal
Education Department, or some other branch of the Civil
Service. But that sort of thing didn't interest us at all.
'When he arrived at our front door, he always asked softly:
"Gomen kudasaft" (May I come in?) and when we answered:
"Who's there?" he would say: "It's me!" By that time,
however, he was inside our room. In fact he behaved as if he
and we were confederates in some sort of a conspiracy.
(
It occurred to me that the Communists and my friends in
the Peace Movement might now perhaps be thinking that
Kawamoto was a police spy. But "Mr Darkskin" must really
have imagined that I was a proper Communist.
'Tokie and I had to laugh. In fact I've never been a
Communist or a police spy. Why can't they ever see that?'
Until early 1957 countless signatures were being collected
throughout the entire world of those who demanded an end
to the testing of atomic weapons. In Japan alone the total
number of those who signed the protest reached thirty-three
millions. In the Hiroshima district the proportion of those
signing was even higher. A million men and women of all
political views from the extreme right to the extreme left,
who normally had no single point of agreement, had here
taken up an attitude opposed to the tests. In this question the
mutual antipathy of the political parties was non-existent.
For here in Hiroshima the people thought that they knew
better than anyone else anywhere in the world exactly what
atomic war means.
When bad weather was expected the newspapermen now
reported regularly the level of radio-activity in the anticipated
rain, and warned their readers in the strongest terms against
drinking rain-water. Almost nobody now dared to go out into
the rain without some sort of a head-covering; for there was a
rumour, based on nothing beyond the memory of what had
happened immediately after the Pikadon, that 'hot' rain
caused people's hair to fall out. People only dared eat rice in
small quantities, for the Japanese professors had said that the
quantity of Strontium 90, which causes cancer of the bone,
was especially high in rice.
When early in 1957 the British announced that they too
planned to test their H-bomb in the Pacific, a new wave of
protest passed through Japan. The 'pro-Americans' had
refused to take part in the demonstrations against American
tests; the Communists and fellow-travellers had similarly and
shame-facedly kept quiet when protests were made against
the Soviet Russian tests; but now there was yet another
enemy against whom every voice could be raised, Great
Britain.
The collection of signatures, the mass demonstrations and
the sit-down strikes outside the foreign embassies had hitherto made no impression upon the great Powers. But now a
new idea was put forward. This was that a Japanese ship
should be sent into the sea area sealed off for the proposed
H-bomb tests. And this idea was immediately received with
the greatest interest and approval.
The idea was rejected by the Government spokesmen as
'too extreme', all the more so when the British declared that
they would not allow their tests to be interrupted by the
presence of an 'intruder' in the forbidden zone. Japanese
public opinion, however, generally approved of the scheme.
Since the moment when this idea had first been put
forward Kawamoto had been wandering around like a sleepwalker. Even his fellow-workers on the building site had
noticed how absent-minded he was, and teased him, saying
that he must be 'in love'. For he had told them that he finally
planned to be married at Easter.
But it was quite other thoughts, not at all concerned with
romance, which had produced this effect on him.
'I thought that many people had probably already volunteered to sail in the protest ship. How could I tell Toki-chan
about what I proposed to do? How would she react when I
told her of my intention to volunteer myself? And what
would all the people whom we had already invited to our
wedding say?'
One evening Kawamoto discussed with Toki-chan the
business of the protest ship, and told her what were the
arguments being used for and against sending it into the
prohibited zone. He had managed to get the conversation on to
the subject, but even so he dared not as yet even hint at his
own plan of sailing on board the ship.
He writes:
'I could scarcely bring myself to look Toki-chan straight in
the face. She would now surely decide that I was a totally
unreliable fellow. First I'd said that we must postpone our
wedding because we had to look after the orphan children
then; I'd raised all sorts of "financial difficulties"; and now,
when we'd decided at long last to get married in spite of
everything, there was this.'
But Tokie had apparently recognized long ago what it was
that IchJro really wanted to say.
She laid aside the newspaper she was reading and asked:
'Ichiro-san, what would you do now, if you didn't have to
take me into account at all?'
'Well, in that case . . . to tell you the truth ... I mean, the
whole truth .,. Well, I've been thinking all day that maybe Pd
go with the others in that ship ...'
'In fact you've really been thinking about this for quite a
long time, haven't you?'
'Yes ... Of course ... Naturally,' he stammered. 'But, Tokie,
if I do go I want to go alone. Please forget about me. I really
am a hopelessly incorrigible fool...'
'I. see. That's why you've at last talked to me about this
today. To tell me that you want to go, and go alone?'
'... in any case ...'
'And what will happen to me?'
'You should marry somebody who can look after you
properly."
Tokie bowed her head.
'I could see in the poor light,' Kawamoto remembers, that
her eyes were filling with tears. Two or three minutes passed,
and then she said: "Why didn't you actually ask me if we
shouldn't both go together and volunteer for the ship?"
'"That's nonsense. I'm all alone in the world. You've got a
mother and sister to think about..."
'"You don't really love me. Mother and sister would surely
understand. Please let me volunteer too."
* "No, no, that cannot, that must not be, Toki-chan. This
is different from war. You don't know what might happen to
us..."
'"Yes I do ... I do really. I was here in 1945.1 grew up in
Hiroshima, just in case you've forgotten."'
The rats were audible overhead, and the lamp cast a
flickering glow across the room.
'Tokie drew my attention to an item in her newspaper.
The fifty-one-year-old writer, Eiichi Iwata, had volunteered
for the ship. He had declared: "I am not doing this in the
Tokko seishin (the aggressive spirit), nor am I a Communist. I
am acting solely in the service of peace."
'"You see," said Tokie, "even people who have only ever
heard or read about Hiroshima are volunteering. And I, I
who lost my own father through the bomb, should I just sit
here and do nothing? After all, I'm the child of an atomic
victim. Anyhow, as a Christian there is nothing else I can
do."
'All of a sudden I gave in,' Ichiro recalls. 'I said: "Very
well, we'll both fill in the form and volunteer. Give me your
hand." I then pretended that I was going to bring my fist
down with all my strength upon her hand, which lay on the
sheet of paper. Instinctively Tokie drew her hand back.
' "You see? Every human being instinctively tries to avoid
being hurt. We shall perhaps be deluged with boiling water
and red-hot sand. Our ship may be sunk ... Do you still
wish to volunteer? You are quite free to do so or not as you
choose."
'Tokie fell silent. After a few minutes that seemed endless
she spoke at last, and her voice was filled with determination.
"Yes, I do want to go. Regardless. And not just out of
stubbornness. It may seem mad, what we want to do. But what else is there that we can do? If the people out there in
the rest of the world would only understand that we are
acting deliberately after we've thought it all out. Why in
wartime is it taken for granted that people are prepared to
sacrifice their lives - but when it's a question of doing
something extraordinary to prevent a war, they're all immediately afraid of appearing ridiculous or being shouted down as
fanatics? Oh, these too, too delicate souls! If only they'd be
prepared to accept today one thousandth part of what threatens
them for tomorrow!"'
Epilogue
OUR HIROSHIMA
1
The windows on the second floor of the Hospital for Post
Office Employees in Hiroshima, through which, on 6 August
1945, Dr Hachiya could see all the way across the flattened
city to the sea coast far away, are nowadays made of double
glass. Everywhere the eye sees walls, house-fronts, new
buildings, more windows. Between them grow a few thin
young trees. The sky is criss-crossed by wires. The scene is
set, the city has been rebuilt.
In the 'Place of Suffering' the price of land is rising year
by year. Speculation is rife, and in the business district they
are already pulling down buildings put up 'after the bomb' in
order to replace them with new and larger ones of many
storeys, for the price of land is now so high that low houses
are no longer an economic proposition.
In Kamiyacho, where Professor Nagaoka had roasted his
sweet potatoes in the complete solitude that prevailed in the
midst of the atomic desert after 'that day*, the great bus
station now stands. Over eight hundred buses arrive there
each day, to unload and load up again. From dawn to dusk
there is the trampling of thousands of pairs of shoes and
sandals as the pedestrians are shepherded through the traffic
by the policeman on point duty. The seven hundred taxis
drive at metropolitan speed. Since 1954 the number of
motor-cars in Hiroshima has trebled.
Fourteen years after the atomic disaster the Chugoku
Shimbun published the following balance sheet:
'There are now more houses in Hiroshima than before the
Pikadon. At that time there were 76,300; today there are
approximately 90,000. Our population has already passed the
highest point that it reached during the war. Since 1956 the
average income of our citizens has exceeded the average for
all Japan. It therefore goes without saying that the per capita
possession of electric washing machines and of television sets
is higher in Hiroshima than anywhere in Japan . . .'
The public buildings in the Park of Peace remained
unfinished for years on end owing to a shortage of money;
now they have been completed, a smooth, grey, chilly edifice.
In the Atom Bomb Museum a tall thin building on stilts,
consisting mostly of glass, is now the comfortable home of
Professor Nagaoka, its Director; he presides over the relics
of the horror, carefully preserved behind glass. Greasy scraps of
clothing seared by fire are here displayed as if they were the
treasures unearthed in some Egyptian King's tomb.
Nearby, in the somewhat uninviting permanent exhibition
staged by the Regional Board of Industry, there is a not
dissimilar display of rubber goods, tinned foods, textiles,
insecticides and wood products. But now, as in the old days,
three large industrial combines really mould the face of
Hiroshima: the Mitsubishi shipyards, the Toyvo Kogyo'
transport works, and the Nippon Steelworks. Writing about
these on 6 August 1958, the Japan Times reported that they
had 'completely renewed their factory equipment, paying
particular attention to the production of munitions. Here
American artillery pieces are being remodelled, and adjusted
to suit the requirements of the smaller Japanese soldiers.
The monthly output of such remodelled guns in Hiroshima is
the second highest for all Japan ...'
Many of the inhabitants of Hiroshima can now say of
themselves that their 'pockets are warm* with the money they
have recently earned. Almost every evening the great floodlamps blaze above the new baseball diamond, and almost
every evening all the seats in its big stadium are sold out.
Hiroshima now has fifty-one cinemas; this is the second
largest number in all Japan.
Some of the keenest promoters of the 'new Hiroshima' are
now asking whether the time has not come for a complete
break with the past: should not an attempt be made finally to
forget what happened on 'that day'? They would really like to
see the very symbol of the Pikadon, the naked girders of the
'Atomic Dome' (which even now is not a scheduled public
monument), pulled down, so that this gaunt ruin need no
longer trouble the ambitious, forward-looking citizens of the
new Hiroshima with sad thoughts concerning the past.
Yet in Hiroshima of all places such a 'destruction of past
destruction' can hardly hope to achieve the desired end.
Anywhere else in the world it may be possible to act as if the
last war were now a part of history, and thus to include the
possibility of a new war in calculations concerning the future.
But here in Hiroshima the past has not ceased to exist: with
each new victim of the radiation sickness who, after years of
being spared, is struck down by the disease, the past is once
again and unavoidably present.
Hiroshima does not point the way towards peace because it
uses the word Heirva (peace) as a sort of trademark which it
attaches to everything and anything, but because it gives a
faint indication of what the world would look like after an
atomic war. We may assume that what would be left after
such a war would not be totally dead desert without human
inhabitants, but rather a single huge hospital, a world in
which everyone was sick and wounded. For decades and
even for centuries after the last shot had been fired the
survivors would go on dying because of a quarrel whose
origins they and their descendants would have probably
forgotten long ago.
The monumental municipal buildings are not Hiroshima's
memorial, but the survivors whose skin, blood and genes are
branded with the memory of 'that day'. They are the first
victims of an entirely new sort of war, which cannot be ended
by an armistice or a peace-treaty, a *war without end' which,
reaching forward from the present, embraces the future as
well in its circle of destruction.
A man who lives in Hiroshima for any length of time will one
day fall victim to the 'vision of ruins'. Behind the white
facades of the new buildings he will see the tragic, pitiful,
twisted girders; the neon lights will fade and only broken
glass and trailing wires will remain; the fresh green trees will
be blackened and burned, the broad, streets scattered with
rubble and ash. In the 'new Hiroshima' a man develops an
ear for the undertones of fear and morbidity that the clatter
of the new buildings now going up cannot smother. For fear
and horror are constantly forcing their way into the city's
daily fife.
Almost every day the newspapers here publish some item
about an 'atomic tragedy'. Most of these, to tell the truth, are
the same story that we already know so well, and arouse
scarcely any conscious attention. But again and again something will happen to shock even the indifferent. For example,
there was the story of the thirteen-year-old schoolboy, Kenji
Kajiyama. On 7 August 1945, that is to say the day after the
disaster, his mother had left her home on the Island of
Toyoshima, a fantastically beautiful place famous for its
oranges, and had come to Hiroshima to look for the remains of
her aunt. While digging in the rubble she had probably
received a dose of radio-activity which, though not of great
strength, was yet enough to damage the child in her womb,
for she was five months pregnant.
Four months later Kenji was born, a perfectly healthy
child. Thirteen years later he had to die, the victim of a
catastrophe that had taken place before his birth.
There has recently been a sharp increase in the incidence
of radiation sickness among those who had only come to
Hiroshima after the dropping of the bomb. These cases of
very long delayed action are, however, not the only puzzle
confronting the Japanese doctors as a result of the bomb. In
mid-June 1959 a congress of specialists took place in Hiroshima at which the consequences of total bodily exposure to
Radio-activity were discussed. Dr Masanori Nakaizumi of
Tokyo University then announced that the Hiroshima survivors must expect to be stricken by a wave of 'hitherto
unidentified sicknesses'. In particular the incidence of boils
(both harmless and malignant) had increased considerably. It
was only now that the secondary consequences of atomic
radiation were beginning to become apparent in large numbers: these included damage to the brain mechanism, to the
heart, to the pulmonary organs and to the circulation of the
blood, as well as premature senility both physical and mental.
At this Congress Dr Gensaku Oho, a doctor who had been
practising in Hiroshima since 1938, and who had spent
almost all his personal fortune in studying the biological
results of the atomic bombing, produced a great deal of
statistical evidence. With the help of students he had studied all
the fatal cancer cases since 1951, and had established that the
number of people dying of cancer in Hiroshima was
considerably higher than in the rest of Japan.29
The number of cases of sickness directly attributable to
the after-effects of the atomic bomb have thus been increasing
rather than diminishing. Since April 1957 anybody so
afflicted has been entitled to free medical treatment, yet to
everybody's surprise the number of those applying for such
aid in the first year after this new law came into force was
only 23,000 'victims', that is to say less than a third of those
entitled to the new benefits. What is the reason for this? Dr
Kubo, the psychologist at Hiroshima University, has studied
this problem and has questioned many hundreds of people
awaiting treatment. The conclusion he has reached is that
most of the atomic sick do not go to be examined because
they are convinced that nothing can be done to help them.
So, according to them, there is no point in wasting their time
undergoing treatment that will prove useless. For many of
them the economic motive is decisive: most of the survivors
simply cannot afford to spend days on end being examined in
a clinic, for who will support their families while they are
M
In Hiroshima, between 1951 and 1958, the percentage of deaths due to
cancer was 10.92 for men and 8.96 for women; in the rest of Japan die
corresponding figures were 9.09 and 7.72.
away? So precisely those who need treatment most urgently
are staying away from the clinic.
Even in these circumstances there were individuals who,
prizing the laws of humanity above the letter of inadequate
man-made law, gave their help and by their example forced
the authorities to pay closer attention to the financial needs
of the 'atomic pariahs'. At the time of writing there are more
than a dozen different charitable organizations active in
Hiroshima, assisting those suffering from the radiation sickness and their families. They are hindered in this work by
the fear lest they be exploited by persons simply feigning
sickness; the result is that it takes so long, and involves so
many problems, before financial assistance can be obtained
that many a would-be applicant gives up and does not bother
to go ahead with his application.
Nobody has so far got to the root of the problem, which is to
move the atomic sick out of the slums in which they now
putrefy and to install them in a healthy, modern housing
settlement. Despite all the current 'prosperity', the large sums
that would be required for this have not been forthcoming.
In one of these crumbling barraku districts Ichiro and
Tokie now live. The ship in which they both wished to sail to
the Christmas Islands in 1957, in protest against the atomic
tests, never in fact put to sea, for the leaders of the Japanese
Anti-Atom Bomb Movement recoiled at the last moment
from sending any of their followers to an atomic death.
So Ichiro Kawamoto and Tokie Uematsu were able to get
married as they had planned, on Easter Sunday 1957. It was,
they told me, a beautiful wedding, and many of their friends
turned up to congratulate the bridegroom, who wore his old
white gym shoes for the occasion.
'When we were alone together at last/ Kawamoto has
said, 'I took Tokie's hand and we repeated once again our
mutual promise that we did not wish to have any children. It
was hard, but it has to be.'
Helping people whom society cannot or will not help that is still today the principal task to which Ichiro and Tokie
devote themselves.
'We have reached the conclusion,' says Tokie, 'that inhumanity begins with the contempt and neglect of the individual.
The atomic weapon is the end product of this indifference
towards th,e many individual, inexchangeable, and irreplaceable human beings. We must protest against the bomb. But
that is not enough. In addition we wish to try to change,
quite slowly, the attitude of man to man. Had the Pikadon
never happened I should now be an average dancing teacher
and I should certainly never have understood how much we
still need one another, how much each of us needs every
other human being.'
A new member has recently joined the large 'family' of
people whom Ichiro and Tokie regard as their 'children':
Kazuo M. It was owing to my colleague, Kaoru Ogura,
that Kawamoto read part of my correspondence with the
murderer. Without saying anything to us, he immediately set
about seeing what could be done for that most unusual
'atomic victim'. He wrote to the solitary man, visited him in
his prison together with Ogura, and brought him books to
read. He has done more: he has taken the whole of the M.
family beneath his wing. Since Kazuo's crime they had been
shunned by all their neighbours.
I recently received a letter from Kazuo, in which he says:
'I have now learned how to set Braille. Should I ever be
pardoned, I should like to work as a typesetter in a Braille
printing works. Kawamoto will be by my side, if I am ever
allowed to live outside again.'
This was written by the same human being who in 1945
'murdered' his reading primer, because he then thought that
words could only lie. But since then the written word has
shown him, first, the truth about himself, then friendship,
and has finally given him the courage to start a new life.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work that this book has entailed has thus ended by
affecting the lives of its two principal characters. But that is
not all. The author must admit that his efforts to understand
Hiroshima's postwar story, and to commit this to paper, have
also given a new meaning to his own life.
When I first visited Hiroshima I went there simply as a
reporter who wished to write the interesting history of a
foreign city. But the more deeply preoccupied I became with
this story the more apparent it was to me that I could not
remain outside and above it. For I too was and am part of
that story.
As it happens, I too am a 'survivor'. If fate had not, in its
inscrutable way, ruled otherwise, I should have died in one of
the mass extermination camps of the Third Reich. And so,
at the other end of the world, at the farthest extremity of
Eastern Asia, I was now looking for an answer to the question
that my own life had posed for me.
The question is this:
'What have we, the survivors of the Second World War, so
far done to justify our survival?' Like many others I had, for
years on end, thoughtlessly accepted the fact that I had been
spared. But then I met the atomic victims of Hiroshima.
From them I received a warning of the new evil that menaces
us all. Since then I know that we, the generation of those who
'got through', must devote our entire strength to ensuring that
our children do not merely survive, as fortuitously as we did.
Let every man find his own way to fight for the preservation
of life.
Only: this must be his most serious and even sacred task.
WITH THE AUTHOR'S THANKS
When I left Japan with my notebooks, I came to an arrangement with a private teacher, Kaoru Ogura, that he should
translate into English the notes made by some of the people I
had interviewed. We then assumed that our work together
would last for two or three months at the most; it has been
going on for almost thirty-two months, and has grown into
friendship. During this period Ogura has written me 213
letters, methodically numbered, in answer to my questions,
and at my request has interviewed dozens of people in
Hiroshima. In some cases I had established contacts which
he has known how to deepen and enlarge between the
author and those he questioned, so that my interviews have
frequently become expanded into confessions. Unfortunately I
have only been able to make use of a fraction of these
written communications; had I printed them all, this book
would have been eight times its present length. It is my hope
that a research institute may be interested in safeguarding
this material.
My thanks are due in the first instance to this ideal colleague,
who, when first I was in Hiroshima, put me in touch with the
indefatigable Willie Togashi, my guide and interpreter. It is
not possible for me to express my gratitude to all those who
have helped me by giving me information.
Here, at least, are a few of those whom I should like to
thank:
PRINCIPAL SOURCES;
Ichiro Kawamoto (Labourer), Kazuo M.
(Prisoner in Hiroshima Prison), Tokie Kawamoto nee
Uematsu, Shinzo Hamai (Mayor of Hiroshima), Shogo
Nagaoka (Director of the Atom Bomb Museum), Tsugio
Kunitani (Judge in the Family Court), William A. Togashi
(Librarian), Kiyoshi Kikkawa and wife (Souvenir salesman), Rihei Numata and all the archivists on the Chugoku
Shimbun, Professor Floyd Schmoe of Seattle, Norman
Cousins of New York.
DOCTORS: Dr
M. Hachiya, Dr F. Shigeto, Dr T. Harada, Dr G.
Oho, Dr G. Ouchi, Dr M. Konuma, Dr R. Okabe, Dr N.
Kaneko, Dr H. Kikuchi (all of Hiroshima): Dr J.
Robinson (Chicago), Dr G. N. Hazlehurst30 (Phoenix), Dr
Robert C. Holmes (New York), Dr G. Muth (Frankfurt),
Dr R. Beck30 (Karlsruhe), Dr H. Melching30 (Karlsruhe), Dr
O. Messerschmidt30 (Sonthofen), Dr H. Schmidt
(Offenbach).
HIROSHIMA UNIVERSITY: Dr T. Morito (Rector), Dr K. Sakuma
(Physics), Dr S. Nakano (Sociology), Y. Kubo
(Psychology), Y. Moritaki (Education), F. Kanazawa (Jurisprudence), H. Yamanaka (Librarian).
ATOMIC BOMB CASUALTY COMMISSION: Dr R. K. Cannan (Chairman
of the National Research Council, National Academy of
Sciences, Washington), Dr G. Darling (Director), Dr H.
Maki (Deputy Director), Dr S. Matsumoto (Sociology),
Mr M. E. Rappaport (Administration).
HIROSHIMA MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION: M. Niide (Public
Relations Office), S. Morihiro (Municipal Historian), Y.
Matsuo (Sick Chest for Atomic Victims), T. Yamamoto
(Tourist Office), S. Hattori (Trade), S. Wada (Construction
Office), K. Kamei (General Information).
CHURCHMEN AND MISSIONARIES:
Rev. Y. Tamai, Rev. K.
Tanimoto, Miss M. Macmillan, Miss M.Jones.
WRITERS:
H. Agawa, Y. Ohta, Y. Matsuoka (all of Tokyo): K.
Tanabe (Hiroshima), E. Toll-Morris, I. Morris (Paris), H.
Strauss (New York).
MISCELLANEOUS:
A. Foutohi (Director of the American Cultural
Centre, Hiroshima, at present in Washington), M. Fujita,
F. Kawasaki (Hiroshima Prison Administration),
Professor Mrs Nakano (Head of the Atomic Orphans'
Association), H. Yokoyama (Hiroshima Maidens Project), S.
Kano (Actor and Theatrical Director, at present in
Chicago), D. Honma (Kazuo M.'s Counsel for the
Defence), K. Matsue (Communist Town Councillor), Y.
Nakata (State Attorney), M. Mino (Landlord), Y. Yanagawa (The Musica Tea-room), F. Kamei (Film director),
Y. Fukuii (Painter), and a great number of 'survivors'.
The following were kind enough to read my manuscript and
give me valuable advice, and I should therefore particularly
like to thank: Ursula Ibler, Gunther Anders, Gregor von
Rezzori, Walter Schneider and W'illiam M. Treichlinger.
POSTSCRIPT FOR THE UPDATED EDITION (1980) On
my fifth visit to
Hiroshima (February 1980), I received particular assistance
from: Keiko Ogura, the widow of my indispensable
colleague Kaoru Ogura, who had died the previous year;
Ms Fusako Ueno; Dr Tomin Harada; Prof Seishi Imahori;
Prof Minoru Yuzaki and Ishiro Kawamoto.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hiroshima shisei yoran (The Hiroshima City Almanack),
1951-1957.
Hiroshima no heirea undo (The Peace Movement in Hiroshima), 1957.
Lara - a Friend in Need (A report on the Activities in Japan of
the Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia), Tokyo, 1953.
MANUSCRIPTS
Diary and Recollections of Kazuo M.
Diary and Recollections of Ichiro Kawamoto.
Diary and Recollections of Tokie Uematsu.
Shinzo Hamai: Genbaku go Ju nen, Shisei Hiwa (Ten Years
after the A-Bomb. The Unknown History of City Politics).
Shogo Nagaoka: Haikyo ni tacni (On the Ruins). Stenograph
of the Kazuo M. Case (in the archives of the
State Attorney, Hiroshima).
NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS
Chugoku Shimbun, 21 August 1945-6 August 1959 (morning
and evening editions).
AyumiNo. 9 ('Radioactivity and Marriage'), 15 January 1958.
Japan Times, 6 August 1958. Shukan Schincho, 12 August 1957.
ChuoKoron, August 1958, August 1959. Sekai, April 1958.
Asahi Shimbun, 1 August 1958. Asahi Graphic, Special Edition,
17 August 1952. 'No More Hiroshima*', Tokyo, 1956-1959. Life
Magazine, 15 September 1947, 29 September 1952. Time
Magazine, 8 April 1957. Saturday Review of Literature,
September 1945-1959.
REPORTS AND PAMPHLETS
Semi-annual Reports of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission,
Hiroshima 1950-1957. Y. Scott Matsumoto; Patient
Rapport in a Foreign Country,
ABCC, Hiroshima, undated.
3!
I have not included medical books in this bibliography, since extensive
bibliographies dealing with publications about the radiation sickness in
Hiroshima are available elsewhere.
BOOKS (SELECTED)
Michihiko Hachiya: Hiroshima Nikki (My Hiroshima Diary),
German Edition, Freiburg, 1957.
Ken Doman: Hiroshima, with 128 pages of plates, Tokyo,
1958.
Seiji Imahori: Gensuibaku jidai (The Age of the A- and the
H-Bomb), Hiroshima, 1959.
Chugoku Shimbun 65 nenshi (The History of the Chugoku
Press for 65 Years), Hiroshima, 1957.
Tomoe Yamashiro et al.: Genbaku ni ikite (We experienced
the Atom Bomb), anthology, Hiroshima, 1952.
Sankichi Toge et al.: A-Bomb Anthology, Hiroshima, 1952.
Furyo shudan no kenkyu (Studies of Neglected Youth), Hiroshima, 1950.
Genbaku hignai nojisso to higaisha no kurushimi (The Situation
at this Moment of the Atomic Victims and their Sufferings), published by The Japan A- and H-bomb Council,
August 1959.
John Hersey: Hiroshima, New York, 1946.
Giinther Anders: DerMann aufderBriicke (The Man on the
Bridge), Munich, 1959.
Floyd Schmoe: Japanese Journey, Seattle, 1952.
Fernand Gigon: Formula for Death, London, 1959.
Jean Stoetzel: Without the Chrysanthemum and the Sword,
Unesco publication, London-Paris, 1955.
R. Swearingen and P. Langer: Red Flag over Japan, Harvard
Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1952.
Hugh Borton et al,: Japan between East and West, New York,
1957.
Ralph E. Lapp: The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, New York,
1957.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL POSTSCRIPT FOR THE UPDATED EDITION
MANUSCRIPTS
Shingo Shibata: Die weitreichende Bedeutung der Atombomben
van Hiroshima und Nagasaki (The Far-Reaching Significance of the Atom Bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki),
Tokyo, 1977.
Shingo Shibata: Die Aufgaben der Philosophic und der
GesellschaftsiPissenschaften zum Uberleben (The Philosophical
and Sociological Problems of Survival), Tokyo, 1977
(translated into German by the author; communications to
the author at this address: 37 Toyamacho, Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo 162, Japan).
PERIODICALS AND ARTICLES
Kogai- The Newsletter from Polluted Japan, 1975-8. Published
by Jun Ui, Faculty of Urban Engineering, University of
Tokyo.
Human- The Journalof'Community Studies,July 1977-February 1980, Ohdake Foundation, 1-2 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku,
Tokyo 104.
Journal of Radiation Research, September 1975, The Japan
Radiation Research Society, Chiba, Japan.
Jinzaburo Takagi: On the Japanese Anti-Nuke Movement, in
'Overview from Japan', February 1979, Environmental
Book Center, 1325 Kamoi-cho, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226.
Mathias Muller: Information Transmission on the Grassroots
Level, in 'Overview from Japan', February 1979.
Jun Ui: Der japantsche Kapitalismus als Vorhut der okologischen
Katastrophe (Japanese Capitalism as the Vanguard of Ecological Catastrophe), in 'Kursbuch 33', October 1973.
Rosalie Bertell: Radiation Exposure and Human Species Survival, October 1979 (duplicated).
REPORTS AND PAMPHLETS
W. P. Lammers, Osamu Masaoka: Japanese A-Bomb Literature. An annotated bibliography. Wilmington College Peace
Resource Center, Wilmington, Ohio, 1977.
Japan National Preparatory Committee: A Call from the
Hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Proceedings on the
damage and after-effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, July 21-August 9, Tokyo, Asahi Evening Press.
BOOKS
Keiji Nakazawa: Barefoot Gen, a cartoon story of Hiroshima,
Tokyo, 1978. Robert Jay Lifton: Death in Life: Survivors of
Hiroshima, New
York, 1976. W. E. Smith, A. M. Smith: Minamata, thestoty of
the poisoning
of a city, New York, 1975. G. Anders: Der Mann aufder Briicke,
Tagebuch aus Hiroshima
und Nagasaki (The Man on the Bridge, Journal from
Hiroshima and Nagasaki), Munich, 1959. G. Anders: Die
Antiquierheit des Menschen (The Obsolescence
of the Human Being), Vol. 2, Munich, 1979.